Why Splatoon 3's Challenges Don't Work 

The literal night after this came out more challenges got announced for August including a separate triple repeat, meaning August will have a fair bit more challenges. If this is going repeat for the end of every season then I guess 1/3 months will have a decent quantity, it's not a fix but its an improvement: twitter.com/Ethan_ThisGuy/status/1685852674376278017

I feel like challenges would be so much better if they were available most of the time and not on a weird 2hrs cycle

This isn't the devs' fault. This is a management decision telling the devs how to make the game. It would make sense why most of the dev team turned over. Bad management kills projects. *Always.*

my least favorite part is that by now the "get the highest score" challenge has been played TWICE before the "higher jump" challenge even happened

I really think that the fear of missing out is backfiring, at least in my personal experience. I’ve grinded so much in only the first two seasons that I cannot go back to the game, even now, from extreme burnout.

Challenges have been such a big missed opportunity for no good reason. The FOMO aspect has backfired for me too. Challenges are available so infrequently and are so often something uninteresting that I've stopped keeping track of when they are even happening now.

I honestly think extreme jump could become it’s own subset of competitive once it gets added to pb’s

Another thing I don't like about the challenges is now that we're getting reruns of them, they didn't even change the maps. I could see the argument for why the mode might be important for the balance/fun of some challenges, but there is no good reason they couldn't change the maps to at least provide some variety with the same challenge.

My big tinfoil hat theory behind why Splatoon has so many time restricted events is that the devs are hyper fixated on wanting to make the game feel like it’s own living, breathing world that they make it so only specific modes and events like Splatfests, Challenges, Big Run, and even Salmon Run as a whole in 2 happen at specific dates and times. Considering that this is the same dev team behind Animal Crossing, I feel like this might be the case to some extent.

The 2hr cycles are the most confusing part about this, it makes it super hard to coordinate with friends in different time zones If they are adamant about keeping the events limited time, why not have it for a 24hr period? Nintendo just makes the strangest decisions to disrupt their own games

Honestly I agree. I'm a busy person and I can't even do some of these challenges because of my busy life. They should at least try to make them more frequent, like monday through tuesday then saturday through sunday type of stuff.They should also make it at least 3-4 hour cycle so more players could have a chance on playing.

I think there are two possible reasons for why challenges are the way they are 1) It’s possible the devs don’t want to split the player base among like 5-6 modes frequently, so they make them condense and short to allow other modes to be played (still not a good reason imo) 2) This applies moreso to the entire game as a whole, but when you look back at the update cycle of Splatoon 2, you realize just how chaotic and drastic updates were, especially with how frequent they came, basically reinventing the meta every like month or so It’s possible the devs want to avoid doing that again, but overturned it, making the updates too slow and too infrequent, much like challenges. Perhaps they have yet to find that middle ground of frequency and availability And while I think there are a LOT of things in the game that are less than ideal, I feel it’s also important to mention that there are still good things they added, maybe a little late, (switching weapons in open) but hey, they’re fixing things, they are making steps forward, just at an explo baller pace, but still forward nonetheless. It’s only been a year, challenges have only been here for less than a season, so hopefully year two is much MUCH betted

They should make splatfests challenges that swap every 2 hours to actually make splatfests interesting

2:49 just in case you aren’t aware, “subs off” means sub abilities on gear, not main weapons

I feel like the mode really needs some fun goof-off achievements, like “Splat 3 players with the Trizooka in a match”. Challenges could be a great casual experience for modes like Tower Control and Clam Blitz that you normally only get in ranked, but the reuse of the same competitive Power ranking system holds it back imo

I think as you said the devs are scared to be daring or different as maybe the times are to try and keep them "special" to the player rather than keeping challenges to a normal rotation but lack-luster modes combined with extremely limited time-frames removes the "special" and just makes them more tedious or yet another grind for the more boring modes.

I personally want to see challenges in splatfests. They'd help with the special event feel, and they'd make for a decent way to add in ranked modes if they're not gonna do that normally

Without hearing your theory on why it's limited, this is my thought: Tri-color suffers the same fate of being locked in the half end of the weekends for Splatfest time, it was originally meant to be a comeback mechanic so it becomes such a special thing. To have something really cool only accessible limited time will make it even more special than Salmon Run now it starts to feel bland (for few players) that they know they could just access it anytime. Same goes to Challenges, make it available to play but rare enough so it feels special. But it basically gives a backlash of people not having enough fun/play time in it and it felt like they expect you to be available 24/7 to play 6 hours total of a challenges or they only allow you to play 2 hours and no more. That is a huge backlash of trying to make something too special it becomes a disappointment.

Yeah I've literally never been available for any of the challenges, except for the (IMO) boring leaderboard ones. Really disappointing. I think that the devs are scared of having too many modes available at any given time stressing the matchmaking by spreading players too widely.

I am so looking forward to that zipcaster challenge but at the same time I’m terrified of the mode being playable when I’m not available.

I think they are being cautious of splitting the playerbase into many queues, if we have people spread out over X, anarchy, salmon run and challenges there will be longer queue times overall which may reflect negatively on the game, hell it's already a problem in high X-powers.

I'm sensing a theme here: The challenges that garner the most interaction are the ones that are actually unique and not glorified anarchy open. That and the weird timeslots, which why don't they have them available all day?

The only fun challenges are actually ones that add something new, like fog and jump battles

I feel like Nintendo COULD be testing out everyone's reaction and interest for challenges, and maybe they'll make them have better time slots in the next season!

I think their reasoning is likely that they're worried about splitting up the queues too much? Which I think isn't very good reasoning at all, since the matchmaking system seems to suck at finding you matches in the first place, which is another problem that needs to be addressed

I really hope someone at Nintendo realizes they need to dial back the FOMO. I get, when the game first comes out, they want all the players to be as engaged as possible with it. But I am becoming resentful of a game that demands me grind out the catalog every season and look at a schedule to find out which 2 hours I can play the cool challenges. Instead of being an easy-going fun chill-out game that people can approach at their leisure, they're making Splatoon 3 into a nagging friend that doesn't want me to play anything else. I would like to play their Challenges but I don't want to engage in their bullshit hoops to jump through

it was so sad how hyped we were to then be the biggest disapointment of splat 3

It really gets me that they're doing the Trizooka challenge with the SAME MAPS AND MODE AGAIN. At least do SOMETHING different, goodness. Let's all agree that the Sheldon Sampler challenge was the best one. Hopefully we get it more with a variety of modes and maps. Edit. Just checked. It's the SAME. MAP MODES. AGAIN. WHY. I mean they ARE good Zones maps, but STILL.

The most fun I had in this game was 2 v 2 tower mode. I want it to be a permanent mode.

as a very casual player who plays once every few months or so, i've only made it to one challenge ever, and thats just because it happened to be on when i was playing. it was the duo one, and as a squiffer main, i had a ton of fun terrorizing my enemies. wish i could do it more often

As someone who has been getting more work shifts during this season (because of staffing issues), I sometimes miss out on an entire challenge or have to decide if I'll get less rest to play from midnight-2 am. Heck, sometimes when the challenges are 10-midnight, I just go til 5 wins

I didn't think of fomo being the reason the devs restricted challenges so. You're probably right. That being said, I think it may be a case of them fearing things being *too* different, despite the theme being chaos, despite splatoon being one of the more unique shooters out there. If they're trying to bring in and keep newer players, they may be afraid of alienating them by changing too many things at once. Regardless, it's exhausting to see so many fun things being restricted by odd hours and such. They at least acknowledge our complaints a lot, so I think if we keep pressure on, there's a good chance we could see some change

They've eventually got to make the gimmicks of Challenges be available to Private Rooms. These mode would be freaking fantastic to communities of friends who just want to horse around in their own space and time!

One challenge that I think could solve everyone’s problems with splatoon 3’s maps is a challenge that makes every surface on every map inkable.

im really glad people are catching on with the devs' obsession with FOMO and forcing you to think about playing the game. it's not fun, its blatantly bad for the playerbase and quite frankly puts me (and undoubtedly many others) off from the game. they dont really know how to run an online service as well as other games and it sucks.... splatoon has so much potential but they keep throwing it down the drain by using FOMO and playing it so safe with such short content support...

I managed to catch the last ten minutes of a window of the two-players-a-team challenge. I found it really fun, and it was quite disappointing that I only got to play three matches. I didn't know there was a challenge that day when I opened the game - it was sheer luck I happened to boot it up while the window was open.

The original name for this mode, in JP, is "Event Battles". Which is probably a way better representation of the mode than "challenges" are

As a casual player who absolutely doesn't have nearly as much time to play as a lot of people active in the fanbase, I've managed to participate in a grand total of... one challenge. Unless you have a lot of free time and keep a close eye on the challenge schedules to know when exactly they're going on, you're basically guaranteed to miss a lot of the time slots for them. It's ridiculous. It's especially disappointing for me, as I was hoping they would motivate me to play the game more often. Updates feel a lot less common than in the previous games, and that means I experience everything new within two weeks, and then haven't got anything truly new to look forward to for around 3 months. So I was hoping that challenges would add new unique twists that would encourage me to play more... but they run on such a bad schedule I can't anyway. It really does feel like this game works on FOMO quite a bit, especially with this and the catalogues, and it's such a strange choice? I don't even think it's working too well, it's actively making it harder for me to experience unique things that would make me actually want to play more

The whole theme with these challenges is that they are events. This is symbolized by the circus icon. The two problems with these events is, unlike Splatfests and Bigrun these events have three different 2 hr playtimes instead of just lasting about 48 hr. If they functioned like Splatfest playtimes they would be available to everyone at more comfortable times. The other problem is some of the unique features themselves. Some do not seem game shaking enough to a lot of players. Maybe the reason for these super short play times is to prevent Challenges from overshadowing regular gameplay modes.

They are treating these challenges like splatfests when they aren't as grand as grand or special as splatfests

I've always said this game is about FOMO but they do it completely wrong. Like fortnite has fomo but it happens so often that even if you miss something there's something new to look forward to but with Splatoon 3 if you just miss something then you just miss it. There's no replacement. There's no reason Eggstra work couldn't be weekly where you get one seed for a whole week and the next week it changes to another. It 100% could've been like that and it would've been great and challenges could've been 48 hour rotations and it would've also been great but they decided not to. Even the badges you get from these events are 100% FOMO.

When Challenges was announced, I was hoping it would be a "For Fun" mode of Splatoon where you could either set up your own room with custom rules with either randos or friends OR have the game offer a preset rule for everyone to play at a similar time distance as say Splatfest or Big Run. And yeah, I'm highly disappointed in how poorly executed challenges came out to be, especially with the strict time limit

I am afraid that the devs are going to make changes to Extreme Jump Battle in the same way they completely changed map layoits from the trailers to the final game. Edit: it seems this challenge is ok

Ive only played like 2 rounds and they were the MONTHLY CHALLENGES where you dont even DO ANYTHING. These time slots are horrendous

“I think this game really tries to use the fear of missing out so much” OH MY GOD YOU JUST VERBALIZED ALL MY PROBLEMS WITH THE GAME IN ONE SENTENCE. THIS IS WHY THIS GAME GIVES ME ANXIETY. THANK YOU Edit: I don’t play anymore I get so anxious lmao so this isn’t working for me personally

I compare Splatoon all the time to Call of Duty, my favorite being Black Ops II. In this game there's a section called "party games" which features game modes like Gun Game where you get a new gun after every kill. Sharpshooter where everyone gets the same gun with a 1min timer. And One in the Chamber where you only have 1 bullet. What I find funny about this is that these came out on launch day and were available 24/7, I could hop in a lobby right now on Xbox and have a blast. What really kills me though is that this game launched in 2012. Yeah that's right 2012. TEN YEARS AGO. And Nintendo wants to give us things that are obnoxiously limited in 2022/2023. I'm not just talking about challenges, this goes for the game as a whole. I don't get how Nintendo gets away with making things so limited when other companies made their games feel like they have no limited.

this game's updates rly are disappointment after disappointment huh. can't even get excited for the good stuff cause theres so many issues like NO kits and little content overall and shooter bias and terrible challenges and so on. pitiful

I feel like the devs of this game are HEAVILY inspired by gatcha games by adding WAYYY too much with FOMO and are trying to get their numbers back using the same strategies that genshin or star rail use but they just don't understand that splatoon doesnt have gatcha-like playerbase in the west. I feel like JP doesn't complain about these problems as much because gatcha games are like their most common feature. honestly the shell-out machine being introduced should have been a big sign in the first place. they're treating this like a gatcha game and not the same shooter game they've been running for the last few years.

I gave up On Challenges, I never know when it is gonna happen, and at this point I know exactly what is gonna happen, this FOMO BS is gonna push people away from the game, Gatcha games and EA games do this on the regular now, and as you can see, the F2P and live service games are Dieing because of it, once again, Nintendo Devs are saying "oh thats a good Idea to keep people in" when the world has seen it, gotten wise to it and is saying No thanks, I will just find something else to do, they are just gonna Kill Splatoon 3 faster and it is their own fault

another fomo feature of splat3 is the catalog, like sure we can get some of the things from the catalog afterwards via shell out (that's super unbalanced currently in terms of reward weights) but it's still a Timed Thing. the monthly salmon run gear too. there's SO much fomo junk in splatoon, its like they're taking the pages from other FPS games and just throwing them into splatoon and expecting people to *like* that

It's a vicious cycle at this point. New cool thing gets announced for the season, said cool thing starts building up hype, Nintendo reveals it's another limited time mode, people are inevitably disappointed, mode gets forgotten, rinse and repeat. This game is going through the shitter right now and it's so depressing to see.

My biggest complaint is the ridiculous limited times. It can and should be fixed

I didn’t take you for a Street Fighter fan going by the music choices, neat.

I want that oh boy 3am patrick edit isolated so badly, it's my entire opinion on league in

I almost wish they merged challenges with splatfests, like making it so each splatfest had a unique challenge that came with it. I think that would help splatfests become more interesting and help the timing problem a bit more

My thought here is that they're slow to roll out these challenges because they want to ensure they they're fun. I suspect that next season they're going to pad out more time slots with redos of previous challenges. We're already seeing some this season. And it's going to probably be somewhere between 1.5x and 2x as many challenges. And it'll gradually get more as there become not challenges to redo. That doesn't change anything about how they could have given us more time with each challenge in a single day. And hopefully they do change that. But I think they chose a slow start for what they're planning to be a lot more reasonable by the end. When there's like 3 or 4 challenges a week because of so many redos it won't feel nearly as rare.

Let’s just hope Nintendo sees videos like this and takes action.

I would suggest to have a challenge modifier rotation every 10 hours in turf war and anarchy open so people could play them casually. You could play them pretty often or you can schedule to avoid them as well, and it being 10 hours means it will cycle to different times of the day.

The reason that it's time limited is most likely to keep que times low, as it's much easier to get a match if everyone plays at the same limited time

i find it funny how the challenges thing is a circus tent because nintendo has became a clown

Everybody shut Up, Chara's video started.

9:46 I WAS LAUGHING SO HARD AT THIS

They need two challenges: -Side Order Scrap (Choose 5 chips to add to your main weapon) -Mr. Grizz's Show-Off (Big Run versions of maps, you can use the Grizzco weapons, all weapons are buffed to their Grizzco Variant)

Hadn't thought of the FOMO angle but honestly that makes a lot of sense with the seasons, catalogues, splatfests, big run, etc. Though, maybe part of it is that Nintendo is afraid of ruining queue times for other modes (there's already 5 without challenges), or they haven't done the groundwork to program in leaderboards for events that last longer than a rotation. Then again, the latter explanation falls apart when you remember that the pro power leaderboards for splatfest exist.

Even now G's theme is still super catchy

I'm fine with challenges being limited-time events (though obviously they should be 24 hours instead of the extremely weird split six hours), but I wish their schedule was more frequent and consistent - like two per week or something. The monthly challenge is very lame, but I think the New Season Challenge actually makes a lot of sense - if anything, it should have gone further and locked you to new weapons to make a "new content only" playlist. I definitely wanted to try the new maps right away so having a playlist that was only those maps was pretty nice.

Knowing the Splat3 devs, they’re not going to make a single change to this. They know the game is flawed as hell. They’ve seen the complaints everyone’s thrown around. And they just don’t care.

It would be less of a blow if challenges were an offspring of League. Like eggstra work to salmon run. So there would be league but every so often league would get replaced with challenges. And if league had specific league modes (team death match and 8 ball) WITH the other 4 modes making it a completely new experience with challenges

I really hope Nintendo is just testing the waters with this, and that Challenge Modes will become more available to play as time goes on. Because the fact that Salmon Run is always open now, everyone liked that. If Nintendo hasn't seen that, it's because they are paying zero attention to the community, or they literally just don't care at all. Either way, Challenges need to be more frequent, and they shouldn't have extremely simple limitations like "No subs". Too Many Tri-Zookas was good! It was chaotic, it felt unbalanced but in a fun way, it reminded me of how I felt playing Splatoon 1! The rest of the challenges have been a bit of a letdown after that, minus fog. TL:DR, I think challenges should be open 24 hours a day like Salmon Run is now, with more original changes to the gameplay

Really nice discussion - my ONE note is that Extreme Jump Battle was literally broken before a fix implemented in 4.1.0, so that's the main reason we haven't seen it yet ;P

IF we are going to be complaining about challenges more so the devs fix them, can we also please complain about how the "Too many X Special modes" are restricted to the weapons that have it ONLY as well? I know Chara mentioned it, but this is super important to me because it feels so restrictive on a potentially super fun mode. Its so sad.

I feel like if they were to make challenges a mode that was there 27/7 and the objective changing every month, would have made challenges 1000000000x better. 🤔😑😎

I dunno what devs expect people to do about it. I haven’t played salmon run in Splatoon 2 because of the timetable thing, but I do from time to time in 3. I haven’t played ANY challenges so far. I have other games to play, it’s not like I WANT TO PLAY A SPECIFIC MODE IN A SPECIFIC GAME THIS MUCH to time my day around it. Lol.

I haven't played any challenge, I don't even know where to look for when there will be one. Ok, probably on the app but I rarely open that thing. I have been bussier irl and struggling with other stuff; I just ocaccionally play splatoon for a couple of matches and then leave, and it isn't something I can do constantly. For a casual perspective, these challenges are pretty much non existant. I will have to put some effort into hunting down one of the challenge I want to play, and that is a really bad thing.

The shifty stations should be in the challenges!

Wanna know the worst thing about the monthly challenge? The devs could've just used Anarchy/X/Challenge Power for Anarchy Series

I don't know why Challenges wasn't just made into a mode that's on all of the time. Have those 10 or so challenges just keep rotating every 2 hours as just another alternate game mode to play if you want something different from turf or anarchy. Then keep adding a few new challenge concepts to the rotation every season. Because of my work schedule I've only found the time to play one foggy notion challenge rotation and that's it.

i feel like theyre trying to dip their toes in the mode and possibly get some feedback but its backfiring so bad considering the feedback is "why is this so limited? im not waking up at 4 am for this" %99.9 of the time. salmon run rotations used to be shorter but they slowly extended it because people got sad over it being closed when they wanted to play the mode. and it sure didnt last 6 hours split into three parts. like the upcoming ones are at "i just woke up" - reasonable - "i am this close to going to sleep" hours for me since i have a super consistent sleep schedule. also these are perfect for a casual mode! turf is...boring and the power system like x and open have is very unnecessary for challenges imo. i like the lil token you get for every 5 wins but getting it once is a bit sad. "how do you get the badges then?" wins. like the lil ranked icons or judd

I remember really enjoying the 2 v 2 tower control for how ridiculous it was. But sadly, I only have time for one of the three rotations. It’s also hard to play for too long when the only incentive is a token and bragging rights.

The content trickle overall has been killing the game for me. I grinded out the catalog for the first two seasons then slowly started playing less and less. I was going to try to come back to the game but I just ended up playing for a day or two, missing the challenge windows, then quitting again. It's a shame how infrequently content gets added, and even when it is added, it doesn't change the game much or just can't be played due to time constraints.

yeah my biggest issue I have challenges is the schedule and I feel (especially with the changes to open) the climb for a high challenges feel kinda pointless and take up slots for other challenges (ngl I think a super high swim or walk speed challenge could be stupidly fun) at least for me So far my fav challenge has been the random weapon one and the trizooka one was also really fun (do kinda wish that you could use any weapon and it wasn't limited to just the weapons that already had zooka as a special)

When I saw the challenge schedule and realized I wouldn't be able to see ANY of them due to work, I set the game down. It's Street Fighter 6 for me til Side Order, game learns YOUR schedule to display to your friends - I'm never gonna live my life on Nintendo Time.

I missed trizookas both times it ran. I just wish they'd run these for a full 24 hours so I could actually play them........

I feel like the reason why Eggstra Work is not as bad is because the maps and the waves could happen in normal salmon run. Extreme Jump Battle will not show up randomly in Open but Grillers will show up in normal Salmon Run

Splatoon adding FOMO is NOT the wave… Anyway, “Challenges” was the PERFECT testing ground data gold mine for future kits for the devs to consider but they went with some super tame mode. I was a bit interested in “Too Many Trizookas” until I learned that you NEEDED to play a weapon that had it rather than choosing any weapon you wanted. This mode failed and I don’t really care for any of them let alone the horrid time frames they decided to put on them.

Few things I Wana say 1: FOMO is def real in 3, especially with the stuff u listed, plus the season catalog which, if you don't complete, have to gamble for the emotes/banners/titles etc. 2. The monthly challenges and new season ones are by far the least played on a casual side. It takes about 30 sec for me to queue up, rather than in Trizookas where it took like 5 secs. 3. I forgot the other thing

I’ve missed every challenge except for Too Many Trizookas because they always take place during my work hours.

Maybe challenges really aren't for the players but rather for the devs. Hypothetically they could be experimenting with adding new options to set in custom lobbies (imagine customization to the level of what Halo has). Maybe these are beta tests for that functionality. I mean a beta test having a super specific hour like this would make sense. "Will a full multiplayer match run well if the whole stage is filled with fog particle effects?", "If everyone's firing trizookas at the same time constantly, will the game still run well enough?". I mean.. why go through the effort of having dev work for adding specific modes if they'll only be used in such a limited time and then forgotten? Isn't that wasted work that 95% of the playerbase wouldn't experience? I'm not saying we'll get an update for This game for these changes, but, it's possible this is in preparation for the next game.

I think announcing Side Order/large-scale DLC so early was the worst thing the devs could've possibly done. I feel like what's happening is their resources are being spread too thin working on the DLC to make much-needed changes to maps, league, more new kits, or make Challenges more fun, a.k.a. the actual game people spend the most time with. I will accept a delay to Side Order if it means map reworks and league battle.

Favorite challenge so far has been Sheldon Sampler, had to stay awake almost 24 hours just to make it. I really really enjoyed it and found a lot of new weapons that peak my interest, but it was awful having to stay up that long. Literally just "Ah yes I love nuking my sleep schedule in exchange for 2 hours of splatoon" I'm glad it was worth it but my god nintendo please fix this

There is no reason for this paid game to have new modes super limited like this. I would also like to see these challenges unlocked for private battles so that players can just have fun and mess around with the altered mechanics like back in the Halo 3 days.

I like the challenges idea, BUT please make it like a splatfest. how it would work would be 48 hours of challenges but every 2 hours the challenge would switch. This would make them more popular and more people can actually play them. For me i never played one because I'm asleep during the first 2 because it's in the middle of the night and usually the third happens well I'm in school

No one is gonna see this but whatever. Challenges looked so cool when they were realeased, and turned out to be a terrible piece of garbage bc they are timelocked on one day for six hours. SIX HOURS. And if u miss one then you're not seeing it again. It's the replacment of league bc nintendo said on the website that league had a "twist". It's so easy to fix the time problem. Just make them last for the day and the next day have a new one. It dosen't help that half the challenges are either ok or terrible. The high jump mode was apparently the best one and I couldn't play it bc of the stupid time locks. Challenges could have been so much better, but they fumbled it. They can still change it but right now they are a failure.

The phrase “one step forward, two steps back” is thrown at Nintendo at alllll the time when we criticize them, and personally to me in the case of splatoon it seems like the “two steps back” type of decisions that they make comes solely from share holders; who’s only incentive to pay the devs to make the game at all is for them to make a significant financial profit. Nintendo is a notoriously private company and from what we’ve seen the splatoon devs try to be as transparent with us about their creative project as they possibly can, more so with actions instead of words (for example giving us octo expansion after a very lackluster hero mode in s2). Because of this don’t have any reason to believe that their singular mission with creating splatoon was to profit as well. We can see that they care about their game Nintendo also is not in the business of making cash cow games like madden or cod where they release a new one every year. They’re known for making single purchase, well polished single player experience games that are supposed to last forever To me it seems like the devs are really trying to strike a balance between appeasing the company execs and their brand as a company who makes well polished single player games and creating a cooperative online game that’s supposed to last AT LEAST 3-4 years in the current game cycle. Their usual business model just doesn’t work for an online game like this especially one without micro transactions or multiple payments, so it seems like they use manipulation tactics like fomo to incentivize players to keep buying/playing even after their one time purchase. I would assume salmon run being limited time was their way of doing so in s2, and I really wouldn’t be surprised if challenges being a limited time was planned in their pre launch roadmap for the game as a replacement for what salmon runs purpose used to be Obviously I know I don’t have any proof to back this up, it’s just how I feel from what I’ve observed. It’s really disappointing but I don’t think the devs are the ones to blame for this. Definitely their are creative decisions we can criticize them for but I personally don’t think this is one of them. Like I said very disappointing but I don’t see it changing, ever ://

I think they are keeping the changes low because they don't want a weapon to be OP with a challenge change. but I feel like that doesn't matter. would some weapons be OP with infinite zipcaster? yes, but it would still be super fun! especially for casual players - I am really bad at using zipcaster that I end up recalling before I can do anything, but if it was infinite I could actually have chances to experience doing cool zipcaster stuff.

I missed the brush vs rollers challenge because I just completely forgot about it. I was so sad :(

I think that part of the reason why people didn't complain too much about Eggstra Work being limited is because of the relative amount of time and setup that is needed for a successful run. You have five waves of 100 seconds and in order to actually get a good score you need everyone to be on the same page. In this case the team is only as strong as its weakest link; you only need one person to bungle up the luring or not being familiar with the chosen strategy to ruin a wave and potentially the whole run. And every time you start over you have to do the mind-numbingly boring first wave again, the one you could almost do with your eyes closed. Challenges, in comparison, require no planning or careful coordination to get going, they take about five minutes at the most, lack a slow start and Anarchy/Turf War are played by way more people than Salmon Run. Really, all they need to do is keep a challenge available for the whole day or whole week in order to fix the whole thing.

Random weapons sounds so fun, I used to randomly pick my weapons in 2 for a bit because otherwise I'd literally only play 3 weapons which gets stale after a year. I should start doing that again tbh

I'd love to play but I am either sleeping, working, or ...sleeping.

As an adult who works full-time and plays a lot of other video games I never played challenge mode and, if it stays so, I just can't afford to care!