Dude, the amount of times back in splat 2 where I heard people be like "don't stream scrims because it gives our competition free info" was ridiculous. The western scene for the past few years has been more concerned with making sure other players don't get to their level instead of trying to get others and themselves to a higher level, and it's really starting to show now.
People were even doing this in Splatoon 2 but I think it was only the very top level teams because they wanted to practice for world championships. You even had people hacking the Splatoon 3 splatfest demo to look into all of the maps before the very first Splatoon 3 NA championship to get an edge over the other teams.
Hey, I'm the person DUDE talks about in the first few minutes of the video, first of all, I didn't think my tweet would have so much impact, otherwise I would have worded it better and even strengthened my arguments, but as I said, I just tweeted on a whim because my Splatoon 2024 year was almost over when I made the tweet (I had just finished my last 2024 tournament) and I wanted to express my thoughts before 2025 started. I watched your entire video and would like to clarify a few points you made: - Content You're mostly right about content creation, and I'm the main suspect here, I've been around for a while and never truly focused on building an audience or sharing my knowledge, I've done a bit of content in the past but stopped due to lack of motivation and time, but now, especially after hearing your, Chara's, and fuzzy's opinion on streaming and creating TH-cam videos, I understand where you're coming from. However, as you said, we're all getting a bit older and we all have our IRL responsibilities now, for someone like me, I'm not sure it's worth the time and effort to devote to TH-cam content at this specific time of Splatoon 3's lifetime, personally I feel like my own passion for this sort of thing has died out, but I'll never know until I try. I know my games reviews helped a lot of people back then (6 years ago Jesus), but I'm not sure this kind of content would still be popular nowadays and it wasn't hot even then. Streaming is easier, and there's really no excuse because you just click a button and play the game, but the content is either X-Rank SoloQ or Tourneys/Scrims, which can bore people after a while and I don't know if it will help the scene in the long run one way or another. Don't get me wrong, creating content would certainly help, but back then a lot of people streamed simple stuff and downloaded pretty much everything without editing, which worked, but today I feel like people consume Splatoon (and video games in general) a lot more differently than they used to, and I don't think the same “easy” content would work these days, at least on TH-cam. If someone wants to get into content creation, as you said, they have to work by themselves like you did, it's not your duty to babysit them at all, but these days I get the impression that it's a lot harder to get into content creation, at least in Splatoon, which might explain why so few people are actually doing anything, especially since Splatoon 3 is ending, but I hope people will feel motivated when Splatoon 4 comes out, that will be the big turning point for the community. - Teams and Identity I have mixed feelings about this, we didn't have any real teams at the end of Splatoon 1 and that was one of our most active time for the playerbase, I feel like that didn't stop people from enjoying the game or clicking on the streams. I understand your point that, as an outsider to the Splatoon community, you just want to recognize names to feel invested, team names like NSTC, Alliance Rogue, Kraken Paradise or Team Olive all ring a bell for former members of the community, that's for sure, and that kind of thing doesn't exist these days in our current scene. In a perfect world, you're right that we should all stick together and make ourselves marketable but in reality our scene is still amateur with young people and people with different ambitions towards the game, so it feels impossible to really achieve that goal. However as a player, I think it's a good thing we don't have “teams”, we've stayed in our own comfort zone with the same players and this has created other hidden problems within our scene, but that's another topic. I had a lot of fun playing with very different people in the tournaments and I regret not having done so earlier simply because I had to play with my team, but of course that's just my view and opinion, overall I feel there's a compromise to be made here. Personally I feel like the issue might reside in the quality of tournaments and overall state of the game, it's hard to want to build anything when there isn't anything to look forward to besides a couple weeklies. For example my team Alliance Rogue rings a bell to everyone in the FR/EU community because we built this team in order to compete in Nintendo Events (French/EU Championship and we went to Worlds), even the "major" tournaments or LANs don't really happen frequently enough, like maybe once every 6 months, so by that time people will lose motivation and quit, maybe you want to try a different team composition so you switch teammates for a tournament etc... And that's not the TO's fault at all, in France especially we are spoiled because we have orgs like EsportBrosTV that's been managing a league with about 12 divisions and 10 teams per divisions for like 8 years which is insane and they're hosting several tournaments for the European scene alongside a yearly LAN event in France. But in Europe especially, it's rough out there, it's tough with Nintendo griefing us with the official tournaments forcing us to play with players from our country only, considering the playerbase in Europe is already so small. And we're the lucky ones in France/UK/German cause we have a big enough playerbase allowing us to have LANs (Fullwipe/Breeze/RSL) and in general just people playing the game but the community in any other EU country is way too small sadly. I'm not too sure about the US but I remember they had a lot of orgs doing great stuff (InkTV/EndgameTV) for the West community as a whole but most of them quit probably due to a lack of motivation (not sure). On the bright side, Sendou is doing something fantastic in my opinion with SQ Major because you have to attend tournaments and gather points for 3 months with the same 4 players to qualify for the major so there is a very good compromise here (Players sticking together and attending several tournaments, and something to look forward to every 3 months). To conclude, as DUDE said, we've known each other since Splatoon 1 and we both want the scene and especially the competitive side of things to thrive, I didn't mean to “doompost” or anything like that, far from it, I love Esports, I've played a lot of competitive games (COD, Overwatch, Valorant, Rainbow6Siege, even recently Marvel Rivals and more) and seeing their scene (much bigger than ours) or even just the Japanese side of Splatoon (the same game we all play), I just feel like we've been missing out on a lot all this time, and since I've been around since 2015, I was there at the peak of the game (end splatoon1 - middle splatoon 2) and I can only feel sad today when I look at the current state of things. I said it in my original tweet, but I love the game, I'm not exhausted, but whether you're a competitive player or a casual member of the community, I feel like the scene isn't really great for either person. It's not all doom and gloom, though; this is a transitional phase and I'm convinced that things will improve. And to be clear, it's nobody's fault in particular, it's a big vicious circle that I don't know how to fix, we need people to play the game, to create content, we need tournaments, we need Nintendo's help. The game's doing really well on the Japanese scene, but it's sad in the West, even more in Europe. I feel like nobody has the power to fix it on their own, we have to work together and again, I just want people to have fun and enjoy the game, and nobody wants the game to succeed more than me. Thanks for reading 😊
Je suis d'accord à propos du contenu. C'est sur que c'est très intéressant d'avoir des vidéos qui explique et donnes des astuces pour s'améliorer et comprendre la scène compétitive de Splatoon, mais tout le ne monde ne peux ou ne veux pas se lancer dans ce genre de contenu. Avoir une présence sur Internet (X, Twitch, etc.) devrait être le minimum histoire que les gens puissent te retrouver, mais le reste devrait être simplement un choix personnel !
Identity is a huge thing. You can track progress and stories for years in some other competitive games. Also, I agree about content. I wish there was more. I speak mainly from a Salmon Run perspective, but I would love to watch competitive/PvP content more often.
I'd watch so much matches where a pro player explains their thought* process and decision making Especially if they're narrated so I can draw while I hear them
I checked my history and I can't find the video since I probably saw it too far back this year, but those definitely exist dunno if the one I watched was narrated or not though *actually I found it not even a minute after sending that cause I remembered that I put it in a note lol th-cam.com/video/iF1ACmIXYJg/w-d-xo.html
I come from a FGC background, and most of the games I play are far smaller than Splatoon. I think the most important thing to keeping a smaller scene alive is to understand what your niche is and what you can realistically do in that niche. Splatoon does have it a lot better than I think a lot of you realize, but the one thing you can't do is sit around and expect things to happen for you if you don't put the work in.
This is why I subbed to DUDE. He is offering solutions and how we can fix things. Just make content! Get things out. That’s how we keep competitive Splatoon alive.
yknow what? fuck it. i don't play splatoon outside of comp now, so i might as well actually make comp videos finally. i've always been too scared to because i thought i wasn't good enough, but yeah, different points of views from different levels are huge for the scene, and ill definitely go for it
Yeah it’s a good point but it varies with every person, some just use it as a hobby to chill, some don’t know or can’t make content for a few reasons. Plus it’s very intimidating to start as a small channel
13:21 This is very true. I'm subscribed to a lot of Japanese players because they post non-stop splatoon content compared to the West. A lot of Japan's top-level players post their content on youtube. I might not understand Japanese, but I do understand how the game works.
Do you have any recommendations? I'm not familiar with Japanese players at all but I'd love to start watching some :D Preferably some who play a lot of backlines, since I struggle to find those players even on the western side :')
@dami_damien Backpacking on this, for I followed a few Japanese players on and off and have several recommendations. Pyon: @/Pyon_1007 I first found out about him from a very old scrim Brian from Team Olive uploaded and have been following him since then. He normally plays backline and is superior with the Charger/E-liter. If I remember correctly, he has participated in lots of tournaments before. Lobstar: @/lob_star_ So, I recently found this phenomenal Blaster player who blew my mind with his style of gameplay. I’ve never seen such a player who excels at everything: from aim, to movement control, to game sense… Watching him play will not only make you a better Blaster player, but it will also help you improve in general from learning how he SEES the game. Nana: @/nanatoman Finally, there is a player I want to recommend not just because of high-level plays, but because his humor struck a chord with me. He mains the roller but has tried playing other weapons before. There was a phase where he was trying to get good at the N-zap, but was failing so badly in every consecutive match. He has another upload where he was matched with a disastrous team, but they somehow made an insane comeback in the last 30 seconds of the match. He’s really entertaining, and he uploads often, too. Anyway, keep clicking on those videos uploaded by these players and the algorithm will recommend you more videos in a blip. If you want to learn more about other weapon classes or a specific weapon guide, all you have to do is go onto gamefavo.com/db/splatoon/weapon-list/, copy the weapon’s name, paste it into the search bar and add “スプラトゥーン” behind it. Fun fact: I still haven't found out way, but the main Splat shooter is called "すし" (Sushi) for some reason. I’ve watched quite a number of players so I’m more or less familiar with the terms they use for callouts.
@dami_damien Backpacking on this, because I followed a few Japanese players on and off and have several recommendations. Pyon: @/Pyon_1007 I first found out about him from a very old scrim Brian from Team Olive uploaded and have been following him since then. He normally plays backline and is superior with the Charger/E-liter. If I remember correctly, he has participated in lots of tournaments before. Lobstar: @/lob_star_ So, I recently found this phenomenal Blaster player who blew my mind with his style of gameplay. I’ve never seen such a player who excels at everything: from aim, to movement control, to game sense… Watching him play will not only make you a better Blaster player, but it will also help you improve in general from learning how he SEES the game. Nana: @/nanatoman Finally, there is a player I want to recommend not just because of high-level plays, but because his humour struck a chord with me. He mains the roller but has tried playing other weapons before. There was a phase where he was trying to get good at the N-zap, but was failing so badly in every consecutive match. He has another upload where he was matched with a disastrous team, but they somehow made an insane comeback in the last 30 seconds of the match. He’s really entertaining, and he uploads often, too. Anyway, keep clicking on those videos uploaded by these players and the algorithm will recommend you more videos in a blip. If you want to learn more about other weapon classes or a specific weapon guide, all you have to do is go onto gamefavo, copy the weapon’s name, paste it into the search bar and add “スプラトゥーン” behind it. Fun fact: I still haven't found out way, but the main Splat shooter is called "すし" (Sushi) for some reason. I’ve watched quite a number of players so I’m more or less familiar with the terms they use for callouts.
Competitive players making videos is your best point imo. I do love watching some good splatoon gameplay and also try to see what i can learn from a player better than me at the game. But i just don‘t know any that upload…
Real! especially if you’re wanting to watch a specific weapon it can be hard to find content on them! There are a lot of comp players uploading, they’re just mostly all under 1k subs so it’s hard to find. It isn’t that there is a lack of them, just that they’re not as popular so the average player doesn’t know about these smaller creators.
Smash has creators like GR Smash and AsumSaus, and Dragonball FighterZ has MoldyBagel. These are examples of people that don't compete at all in their games, yet make excellent content that shows why comp is cool and interesting, and they get people into the scene. I think Splatoon needs more of this sort of thing.
I quit splatoon a few years ago…recently stumbled upon this video and comment…anyways, what happened with jackpot? I heard they won the world championship but that’s about it
You're so right about high level players talking about the game & it's mechanics!! I watch you and chara and it truly does help me get better, as well as inspire me to try new things & think about the game more critically. It's nice being able to help my friends that play casually & tell them things about weapons, gear abilities & maps!! If people don't want competitive splatoon to die then you need ways for casual, low level & medium level players to get interested passionate!!! Also I think that if comp players intermingled with splatoon artists more it'd be more alive, artists are passionate after all. Happy new years DUDE!!! :D
MASSIVELY appreciate this video from you DUDE, I think a lot of people are just saying "it's not dying" without elaborating on the improvements that can be made or diagnosing why it is some people feel that way. It's so easy to be toxically positive or blindly dooming and glooming, so hearing your thoughts is not only important and appreciated, but super useful for the scene. Thanks again for making this video!!
As a mid-average player I couldn't agree more with you dude ! i feel so sad there is not a lot of splatoon content out there, I wish luck to everyone who will start a channel soon :)) I d love to see if you ll make a video about all those new content creator some day !
I feel like despite the variety the game gives, we dont play with that variety enough. New players will find a weapon they like, then immediately look at meta and then feel they won't make it. When you look at the opinions of JP and the West, there can be stark differences in how weapons are valued. Now ofc we can't blame certain weapons from being better than others; but unless its your main, having to use specific weapons all the time will get boring for people. Then comes the fissure of "this is a meta weapon" or "my favorite weapon isn't worth to push". This mindset will discourage and its probably why the West has more casuals or mixed between casual and a little comp. But definitely more casual leaning. Its like being in a rotating cube where a player may get the urge to try but then look at the skills of a top player and just fall to a completely different mindset than before - and it will take a bit before returning to that initial motivation. Instead of trying to be good, most are feeling that they just have to "fit in" which isn't all that exciting. Thirds kits could have been a double edge sword tbh. Anyway, I'm not a top player or anything. Just a consistent S+ but its often what I see. I personally play chargers. And even though Eliter isn't meta I still play it. Try to adapt with it. It is my favorite charger. Sure, I could Pencil. I love Pencil since its release. But there has to be more than just hearing or seeing the same things over and over at times. Win or lose, you have to have some fun in order to keep anything alive in a game.
I'm in exactly the same boat but with splatlings. I love Heavy, it's been my main for the entire game, but whenever I dabble into competitive stuff I get forced into playing Edit instead. I like Edit and I'm not bad with it but it's not what I really want to be doing
@@glan9 playing weapons that dont make you feel anything when you play them is the easiest route to losing interest with the game if you want to play heavy, if heavy makes you want to improve, then play heavy. if the people on your team dont want you on heavy but you want to push heavy, find a new team fr unless you prioritise the team idk
@@glan9 Same with most charger players and pencil. Yeah, Pencil is great. We know it's great. But comp can't be akin to sardines in a can. Do what you want first. Even if it's hard, do it for your enjoyment. May not be meta but make your pro plays anyway
Put emphasis on the scene being hard to follow. I can't tell you how many times I'd watch a splatoon video about anything competitive related, and they'd make a comment saying "The HUGES tourney just got completed" Like huh? There was a tourney? When? No one streamed it, no one mentioned it. Keeping track of the meta is even harder. I remember the transition of Ballpoint to Zooka meta. I was happy Ballpoint was good, the zooka buff was a few weeks ago. Then BAM, triple shot. What? No on said anything, why are they better then ballpoint? Zooka shoots down inkjet, but no thought process of why TRIPLE zooka is the best option. Things change so fast yet no coverage on anything besides the little bit Prochara and others mention. Good video DUDE.
I've always wanted to be a competitive player, and you always help me and motivate me to continue even after a 20 lose streak. Thanks DUDE, one day I hope to snipe like you man, don't give up and keep on going with your motivational speeches!
I feel like people need to make more videos on Splatoon in general. No matter if you’re a comp player or not. I’ve been uploading ranked matches from my streams onto TH-cam from Splatoon 2 and 3 for 5 years now. I even have a side series I do called How I Play Splatoon 3 which in concept is literally just a copy of DUDE’s Tearing it Up series where I talk about my favorite weapons and how I play them. There’s so many resources from my own videos on how to play better, but just like how there’s not many comp players you can name off the top of your head, I also can barely think of any other people like me who upload ranked gameplay. LoveStar? That’s who I’m subscribed to and I’d subscribe and watch more if I knew of more people who did it! I love watching others play the game and I can build off of their strategies to make my own and get even better. I used to be so ass at the game until I started watching DUDE 7-8 years ago!!! People need to make more Splatoon content! I wanna see more Splatoon content! It’s literally just DUDE, Chara and sometimes some other smaller people on my radar.
Splatoon 3 is dying outside of Japan because the players outside of Japan want to play a game that does not exist. Splatoon 3 is what it is. There is no other version, no "project M" of Splatoon. Until there is, you *must* play the game that exists. That includes low-pick weapons for comp, clam blitz, "bad stages" and so on. If you want people to play the game, you have to show them the game. Just play the game.
great video. i remember watching splatoon 2 content very actively due to the fact that my favorite players made individual content. we'll just need to see what happens next
I think splatoon TH-camrs in general in the west is too serious and too negative about the game, not all of them of course. but really who wants to play a game after seeing a TH-camr complaining about the game non stop all the time? “These weapons suck!!””worst stages Ever here is the reason why!!” etc etc.. I mean what’s the point? you guys want to increase subs and player base right? It’s almost self sabotage at this point it’s been like that for a long long time here in the west. Healthy criticism about the game sure is necessary but it’s way beyond that. I think you guys just need to play the game and have fun with it n share videos with viewers, then if player numbers increase so does competitive players too i believe. sorry about ranting.
I've been thinking "No one is uploading Splatoon stuff! It would be the perfect time for people to start a channel!" since Splatoon 3 came out. Disappointed that it never went anywhere. It doesn't just apply to competitive, but also to casual content. I'm pretty sure we only gained like 5 new people in the community that started uploading Splatoon related videos, and even when they do, they only upload once every 1 or 2 months or something. And for some reasons, the people that were already in the community before S3 were also uploading insanely slowly during the beginning of S3. There have been times where I straight up had to wait multiple weeks just to get to watch a new Splatoon related video. People could say "Well, but these people livestream all the time, so what's the issue?" The issue is that there's the "wrong" type of community in that. At that point, you're not contributing to the "Splatoon Community" but contributing to the "(Insert Streamer Here) Community." You barely even see people do collabs anymore. It's all just "I'm either playing alone recording a video" OR "I'm streaming with others, but I'm not making a video." And when people DO collab, the other people just exist somewhere in the video and are basically a background object rather than a person. I know editing is time consuming, but honestly? If people give their editing personality, I don't think most people would even care if it was ""low quality content."" Just don't make it boring and plain. That's all someone really needs. Look at Octoboy's old videos for example. The guy didn't even talk, yet got millions of views because of fun editing. Just uploading weird gameplay clips with some background music and light editing would already be a great start for new channels, and it wouldn't be that difficult to edit either. But, you know, you also need the equipment for it. A capture card, solid internet, a LOT of disc space, etc. So I can understand being hesitant to waste a lot of money on a hobby so that you can create something for a very small audience in an environment where seemingly no one in the community is actively trying to create a environment where other people can succeed. I've been watching you since the Splatoon 1 days, and your channel is actually the reason why i started learning English. Now the English speaking community is going through the same thing, where it feels like in order to play the game, you have to learn a different language.
Competitive is dying because is because I STOP PLAYING. Lol now for real, i believe the reason why Competitive is dying it's because we are in "that period "that spla2n went through updates being gone . In this case the recycling catalog, also the flat maps we got in this game play a big roll on why the game has become monotonous. Curious how in spla2n the meta and weapons became monotonous and in this case we got great and fun weapons but just a few good maps
If Splatoon went the Project M route where mods allowed third kits and Splatoon 3 stages to be improved (some of the stages just need paintable blocks and sponges) then I could see the scene thriving. However, Nintendo is known to be stingy about mods so no one knows how long this would last
I appreciate you for your talks about things like this and also a desire to help all of us newer players to improve ourselves. I know things do happen and people change their interests to other things and I do want to continue more even though I’ve got a new love with Fortnite and kind of not have as much fun playing the same players over and over in Anarchy. I’m sure it’s just a phase but I still enjoy playing any in the Splatoon series. Oh and one more thing I am playing more rainmaker and taking to heart what you taught us about how to move it in each of the maps . Again thank you for your positivity and I’m not going anywhere. Who knows? I might try streaming some time this year. We will see.
What good points, in splatoon 3, I look up pro players or west tournaments, and I don't find anything. I find it so hard to find content around the game. Omega and Chara streams come in clutch. Love those long, vod dumb vids :D
i really wish there were more ways to get into comp causally! i don't mean this as in joining the comp scene i just wish there were more places to watch competitive play
I feel like top players making content won't be helpful in light of Grey's Tweet. Like Grey said, it's the same thing again and again. Like, what Top Player can I see play something unorthodox? Or what team can I see that won't play Pencil or 52? The reason why King's Cup was interesting to me was cause teams used Naut 47, Forge Pro, and Long Rapid of all things. There's definitely the staples like Stamper, 52, etc. but there was diversity. In the west, I can think of Chase the Dualie guy but he alone can't save the scene. I can think of you playing with different weapons here and there and Sniper Sundays. But what else? I feel like the west is very dependent on top level players and will not even touch content makers of low and even mid level players because they "may not be good enough." Oh you have
Well put together, everything you said is true and definitely NEEDED to be talked about But here's 1 factor that I've seen push away people a bit The community itself can be pretty insufferable at times. Running the same annoying jokes from years ago, the whole thing about people gatekeeping VODS, lack of rolemodels since a lot of high level players can be really toxic and egotistical, rage bait being everywhere, Twitter being the main site the community resides on (and even Bluesky carrying over some of the same bad traditions) This kind of stuff not only drives away players that were once enjoying their time, but they also give Splatoon a bad look for outsiders. There's a LOT of people that automatically assume you're a weird person for even enjoying Splatoon, so imagine how they'd react if they heard you play it competitively. There's also the fact that a lot of people just force themselves to play Splatoon because they have "something to prove" but don't actually enjoy the game. They end up getting frustrated or angry over small things, and are VERY vocal about it, but never think to stop playing. This isn't unique to Splatoon of course, but I feel like the issue happens the most with this compared to a lot of other ones, though that may be just from my own experience. I recognize that a lot of this comes from the fact that a good chunk of the competitive community is made of kids, which you don't really see as much in other competitive games, and they still have a lot of growing up to do so they're prone for these things a lot more, but even some of the adults can act rather childish in these situations Overall, this kind of stuff prevents growth. I like your ideas for what to do but it'd be pretty hard to go around with those unless these issues get figured out first.
It's a little wild to me that the focus is on "content" by several people in the comments when what dude is saying is there's a lack of conversations on how to bring people in and cultivate a competitive scene between various skill levels of players! It feels to me like by 3, the western community is too reactive to a small group of top creators, and I see this as an aspect of public spaces for the game being mainly twitter and youtube. But I actually left 3 for pretendo last year and a major factor beyond hardware was that there was a dearth of written info and theory on 3 DESPITE having so many utilities for working on builds and strategy. This game feels very closely-guarded outside of social media.
8:50 You're absolutely right. You actually inspired me to get better (as well as chara and wadsm), all the tech that was shown was so sick. Other pro players need to post on youtube and have identities present in the community.
I'd love to watch comp Splatoon and everything you said is exactly why I feel like it's so hard to watch and care about, I never hear about it unless I go searching for it or Chara talks about something he participated in after it's over, and even when I do find it I have no idea what's going on or who anybody is so it loses interest quickly
You know that really put things into perspective in a way that like... I didn't even think about. Like I already had my jadedness to the splatoon community and comp but... Tbf I was apart of this issue just like the rest of us. And yeah not having a real identity that people can draw to makes it hard for folks to well draw connections especially for those outside looking inward. There needs to be something recognizeable again and there also just needs to be more content out there. Honestly I kinda wish I did do my lil series when s3 came out going over fundamentals to help new and remind old players of things. But well, irl stuff happened and anxieties be a bitch LOL (Especially cause something like that really needs to be carefully constructed with thorough research, things I don't have time for) But even then like, there's just a lot of issues and it's something that needs to be solved as a collective both for casual and comp splatoon if I'm HONEST. Coming from someone who still enjoys playing and has played since the 1st game...
Hey, DUDE! I absolutely loved the video, and I totally agree with you. As a community, we definitely need to do more to help grow the game in the Western scene. People like you and Chara really inspire me to continue developing as a content creator and to produce content for the (competitive) community. While my main focus has been on promoting the German scene, I hope that with more time, I’ll be recognized beyond just being known as one of the competitive players.
Great video, awesome points. Imma start recording splatoon content cuz I've been wanting to for ages and I just need to do it XD no excuses anymore, we gotta do this together as a community and stop relying so much on already established content creators
Yeah, the lack of definitive identities and personalities in the Westeen Splatoon community is a huge blind spot. I'm sorta reminded of the history of competitive Pokemon - which was hyper niche for a while, though players like Marriland and shofu got a lot of the initial early waves of people into the scene. Nowadays even more casual Pokemon fans who don't play comp at least know about WolfeGlick and Sejun Park, and a bunch of content creators like FalseSwipeGaming, Jimothy Cool, Moxie Boosted, Big Yellow, Freezai, BKC, blunder and Wolfey himself have made all forms of comp Pokemon (Singles and VGC and older formats from old generations) incredibly accessible and fun through their videos (though this is helped by Showdown existing and on cart comp training becoming more accessible each gen). Its something the western Splatoon community could take a page from tbh
Hi Dude I never thought about identity thing. I’ve been following you since 2017(not sure), and tried to look for other content creators, but couldn’t find anyone, I thought it was just because I’m not from a English speaking country(and we don’t have much creators in our country), which makes it harder to search or the algorithm simply doesn’t favor it, also I understand English pretty well but not Japanese Until I started to search for Japanese players and found out how outnumbered creators from other regions are. I totally agree with the identity thing, if people do not know how others think or don’t even see others playing the game, it’s hard to build there self identity too I love how Dude always providing a looking for solution mind set at the end, never had I seen him complaining about his team mate, he just does everything he can do.
i agree with everything here. The number of high level Splatoon players (both competitive and non) who post content is abysmal. The only Splatoon videos that appear on my YT frontpage are 3 competitive players (all of which were named in this video), and 5 non-competitive players. As someone who has played Splatoon since 2019, the competitive scene is VERY undiscoverable. a few other thoughts- Nintendo gives significantly more attention to competitive in Japan. Japan also has way more Splatoon content creators than the west. And I feel like these two things are CORRELATED. Did we ever stop and think, maybe NoA and NoE give very little attention to Splatoon competitive simply because they dont see enough people who are interested? This last one might be a hot take, but it is the truth everyone needs to hear: Splitting X Battles into Takaroka and Tentatek divisions is the single worst decision made in Splatoon 3, and functionally it did the exact opposite of what was intended. And the 2nd worst decision Splatoon 3 made was having "Anarchy Series" separate from "X Battles" -- there are too many different queues, so of course it takes forever to find a lobby, and of course you constantly play the same people
I have been wanting to follow competitive Splatoon players and I'm like... where do I follow? Like is there a hub to keep up with it? I see lots of Splatoon fanart on social media, even Splatoon zines, but as a casual player I never randomly encounter anyone advertising talking about competitive Splatoon events in the community. I only find out after the fact from the few (like 5) Splatoon youtubers that talk about it afterwards. So yeah... ^_^; Because no one outside of the competitive scene talks about competitive Splatoon events I just never bothered to pay attention.
I just wish that the game had more recognition in the west and that Nintendo would push for that to happen like hosting big tournaments like they used to but they’re been lacking for a while now.
I kinda stopped playing splatoon 3 recently but it’s not because the comp scene or just the game in general is boring, it’s not that, it’s just because there’s like multiple other games to be playing aswell right now, among other things, I’ve been playing a lot of ‘The Finals’ and Fortnite recently instead, but I still am an active splatoon artist and play a little bit
I would love to get into comp and make a team, but I don’t have much time at all and honestly the lack of recognizable top teams kind of discourages me. I found 2 people I play really well with and I’m pretty sure we’re in the same time zone, but the main problem is that all of us main Decavitator so we can’t really get anywhere with that. Edit: I’ve been getting into ttek and other support weapons more recently, and Kiver is honestly goated
Played with S1 vets when I started to get into S3 Ranked, played with others who were willed to play the game with me. Each time they seemed to get annoyed by me because I couldn't keep up. As much fun as Splatoon is, why would I bother about going anywhere other than playing soloq and getting beaten up because "Match Making" punishes me after five rounds of hidden Power calculations?
My take, and I know DUDE's mentioned it already. I still feel like Nintendo is partly to blame for this. All their events, tournaments, hell even challenges, are all specifically targetted towards the Japanese region only. And this is a constant thing they do. If I were a competitive player, or team player, and checked the NSO App, saw a tournament qualifier challenge, only with the bracket (Japan), I'd just get sad. Nintendo doesn't push Splatoon as hard anywhere else except for Japan, and while I get it, Nintendo is located there, it's also a company with a shit ton of money. Instead what they do, is made these changes to fan-made tournaments a while back which probably didn't sit well with many comp players, and the rest is just a whole mess. Why not give the rest of the world official things to participate in? Probably too late for it now but, for whenever Splatoon 4 gets released. Maybe there's more going on than I might know myself, I don't actively follow competitive splatoon, but just as an observer, this is how it feels.
I think people are convinced they have to have crazy Mr. Beast editing throughout the whole video. But honestly, past the first 1 or 2 minutes, definitely not. And heck: maybe even not at all. Especially if the video has educational value, which tons of pro players have to provide to the masses. Like it could even be Windows Movie Maker honestly.
Ik it was talked about but I feel like western splatoon started being very secretive and started gatekeeping a lot so much so to the point where it’s very difficult to try to get to a higher level not to mention with a lack of anything new for splatoon three at the moment there’s not much to incline people to try comp other then the new lans and the community is also in a rough spot there’s a lot that needs to change in some of that regard
People are used to GaaS. When the service dies for 2-3 years so does player engagement. I honestly believe Splatoon 4 might be a 2025 game though. Switch was released in March 2017 and Splatoon 2 came out in July that year. Arguably Splatoon 2 was a port and additional content. So Splatoon 4 could be summer this year. I think the big feature would be 4 player split screen and 4 player coop for campaign and 'Side Order' roguelike mode. Oh and a graphics bump. This seems like the sort of thing that could be quickly cranked out. All that said, I don't agree with Nintendos 2 years on, 2 years off content strategy. Splatoon deserves permanent quarterly content updates.
Don't think so; there are only so many fun sub weapon possibilities for each weapon, and Melee's scene is kicking despite Nintendo not having an eye on its content at all
@dewroot5176 I think this could be affected by genre and competition. I don't see any good smash competitors but I think GaaS games like Fortnite do pull players from Splatoon. Also, as much as I love Splatoon I don't think squid people are cool. I don't think the Nickelodeon vibe is a positive either. It's all weird. Smash has the industries biggest mascots and music from all these big franchises. It's just not a good comparison.
One thing I want to mention is that you want to reach many people as possible on your contet so you have to speak english. But that is a problem in Europe because many people can understand english but speaking while you're live sucks and you think more about your grammar and pronounciation than actual playing the game. (for me personally)
I'm not a pro player or anything like that, but I do stream occasionally. After seeing your video, I do feel motivated to stream now. Even if I aint some pro. I do have thoughts I like to share.
Honestly dude , I don’t like how every season u get deranked , it don’t encourage me to keep playing competitive to level up , cuz my level just gunna reset when the new season comes
Yup, i played EBTV Saison 3 div 10 I m not stronger but I played with my main Bloblobber. After finished the season my team got broken. I leaved the comp because of some feeling i ve got like Grey's says. I felt bored, bored to fight against the same weapons. No one take risk. No one want to play atypic weapons and show something diferent, yes it s possible to play very good. All of west only play the same meta that felt boring as hell. i ve thinkin to play on Takoraka but from Portugal my connexion isn't good i ll get more instability and disconnexion destroying my fun. Anyway it s an interesting post and your opinion s really good to understand better this scene. Thanks. Ps:You re a bit younger than me 5 or 6 years i think but you re so fucking cool to listening.
Honestly I would start streaming right now if I had the tech to do so. Back in splatoon 1 I actually made a couple TH-cam videos haha funny enough when I was a kid I wanted to be like Zackscottgaming lol.
For the battle pass (i assume you mean the season catalogue?), you just win once a day to get that first-win boost. The next wins raises the bar slower, so if you can spare 30 mins per night even just doing a Turf War battle, it should be doable without it feeling like a drag.
@@dewroot5176 If you're pretty good at turf, it'd even only take ~5 minutes. At night in the toilet instead of scrolling cancerous social media full of doomposting lol. And get a turfing buddy; multiplayer gaming is way less lonely, unfun & grindy with a partner. Or better yet, with a friend. I've done ranked as a quad-chump team with teammates. Just have a silly time once in a while, even actually trying to make it work
@@dewroot5176 That said it's fair to just entirely wanna change palate to a whole different game or whatnot. In my initial comment I was just pointing out that the catalogue isn't as painfully grindy as it seems if y'know the way
@jjQlLlLq I can max out an Apex Legends or Fortnite season with 1/4th the amount of playtime. It's the lack of weekly/daily skill based missions that give a lot of points that make it so tedious. Logging in to get a win 40 different days or playing 30+ hours of matches is way too time consuming.
Hey, long time comp Splatoon lover here. I've been watching competitive Splatoon since the halcyon S1 days, and seeing this topic appear more and more, I would like to share a viewpoint of someone who watches the content you talk about in this video as well as share my general thoughts on the state of the game. It would be very interesting to hear what other players think in comparison to my own thoughts, as I obviously come from a very different perspective as mostly just a viewer. Tl;dr: The game has design issues that players alone can't solve, and it needs changes from developers to thrive. How far do you think the players can improve the quality of the game's life by encouraging diversity? It's really cool that you and other comp players are encouraging others to experiment and bring variety to the table. S3's lifetime for me was certainly not an interesting one. S3 feels very stifled in how it allows the players to express different skills, and that's in part due to the game's core design (maps and weird kits on half the weapons). I believe it's one of the top reasons why there isn't as much variety as people would hope. Having actually watched recent videos of X soloQ with non-meta weapons, I must say that they look very frustrating to play with because they just don't have enough optimization on their own that the cramped maps require, even if the players using them were really good. About half the weapons in the game just don't have the juice unless you have an environment completely different from the current meta. I'm sorry that I have to bring up the abused map issue, it's just... it's an issue at least in some capacity. There's also an issue for me personally that S3 is not something everyone can enjoy WATCHING. (This is in part why casual content has shriveled up dramatically - something that imho gets underestimated a lot as a source of new viewers. Not to mention that the game is aggressively bad for casuals). A tourney where only "weak" weapons like Aero, RB, Swig etc are allowed? Count me in! The matches all take place on mostly same-looking maps and virtually no ways to play off of the main gameplay gimmick? Not very good. This is unfortunately something that cannot be fixed by the players completely. Some people enjoy this design and some don't, that's fair, but i would be lying if I said that it's not as engaging as S1 or even some decent S2 maps. What do you think about this? How much do you think players can do for the game for it to thrive and not count on developers to add more QoL changes? I would gladly watch players try something new for sure.
Many factors are at play here. Splat 3 is the hardest of the 3 games to play. Very fast, and very easy to lose due to a minor mistake. Low level still does a horrible job at teaching newcomers. (Turf war is trash + Special spamming with areo or jr.) Maps are trash. Modes are trash. Weapons, while balanced, feel underwhelming and dull. (Same for the kits) Other pvp or pve competitors exist here and are largely more popular. The series overall is still lacking basic features other games have. And more.
What are some missing features shooter-game players take for granted? also, yeah, if you're afraid of how strong burst bomb is, lower its 35-dmg radius and throwing range, maybe increase sprinkler's throwing range
@dewroot5176 basic matchmaking for starters. Splatoon wants to be weird with its matchmaking when just a simple queue up and select your weapon alongside teammates would work perfectly fine. Like, queue times are already terrible in 3, especially in X battle. That would at least be fine if the matchmaking was good, but it isn't. Map and mode rotations are still here and are still awful. At least show which map will be played, so you can pick a weapon accordingly. Lack of communication options. No voice chat is obvious, but most other pvp or pve games also have a message system and/or a lot of preset messages to say things like: "The enemy is on the left flank!" or "The enemy is behind us!" While Splatoon still only has "This way" and "Booyah" as the only option. The perk system in 3 is also atrocious. Takes forever to grind for abilities due to the randomness.
Good points but IMO this just boils down to the player base size. Nintendo doesn't really like to support their multiplayer scene on a global scale and doesn't want to improve things like net code and etc. This leads to a smaller player base. If we had a bigger player base there would be greater competition across all levels and more content creators that would make regular tutorials.
Yeah you, chara, and chase are the ones that inspired me to get better and get S+ rank and stuff not saying that’s a big achievement but this my first ever Splatoon that I took seriously and played I had s2 but it was a game my friend threw in when he was saling his old switch cause he got a new one so it wasn’t on my radar ive watched it competitively when it first dropped and was excited about it but never played much of it so thank you for what you do and I wish I was good enough to make the west better just don’t have the time for it is all.
Great video. Not sure if this has been said in the comments yet, but don't forget that Elon's changes to Twitter/X made a lot of players feel unsafe or uncomfortable, leading to a mass exodus away from the platform to BlueSky. However, not everyone is there yet, and the community is now split. The only places to talk about and share Splatoon-related discourse are now private or hard-to-access communities like Discord. This really hurt the main component of the community, which are the competitive spectators and casual-competitive players that kept the numbers high. I live in Japan, and every time I talk to Japanese people about Elon Musk, they don't even know that he did anything to change Twitter besides the name. They are still there. We need another agreed central hub again. If that's going to be BlueSky, the platform needs to seriously get to the same level as Twitter in regards to media and content sharing.
Havent wanted to play Splatoon in a while, and the game has been my whole world since 2015. It's even part of my username. I still love watching the content but actually playing the game? I can't. All the weapons I like using are bad and it makes it very hard to enjoy the game. Also im not trying to watch Splat Zones gameplay 24/7. Rainmaker and Tower Control are not that bad. Clam Blitz I understand, but it feels like the only modes in this game are turf war and zones.
This fascination the scene has with being "e-sports" or with emulating Japan is partially what kills any form of identity. One of the most innovative shooters if not THE most innovative shooter we've ever seen is "unfortunately" a nintendo game & we have to deal with it. There's a stigma around nintendo's games being too kiddy from normies. This game isn't under blizzard or riot & isn't multiplatform.. it never will be & that's okay! The sooner competitive players lose this fascination with playing arenas like the ads seemed to promise all those years ago, the sooner the scene can accept what it is: a meme heavy, fun, unserious bunch who sometimes take a game seriously. Why is it everyone comes out of LAN events so hopeful & happy? The focus should be on that energy & magnifying it instead of fighting it. The locals seem to be on the right track :)
The reason I barely play is bc I personally find all the maps unbearable to play in. No matter the rank mode. At least 2 had Piranhna Pit that don't matter the mode or if I lost terribly. I still ended up having fun.
Speaking from personal comp experience, I believe the reason it is dying is because of the sheer toxicity of the community. Every team besides my first one back in d11-9 has ended because of people who just suck. I have left comp three times over the course of Splatoon 3 over random bs that other players pull. There is too much of an emphasis on divs and those being what your skill directly correlates to. Many people are immediately toxic towards ppl who are a dig lower than them, I will say I struggle with this myself, because of the over emphasis on it. The other issue is how people are constantly using each other to reach higher divs. Players push other players, even on the same team, down just so they can rise a little but. The mid level scene div3-5 range is far too toxic and players in div 1 and X just ignore it. Once players move up they never look back. I feel like this creates so much toxicity over perceived skill and doesn’t give players a chance to prove themselves in the game. The plus servers only exacerbate this issue with needing to be voted in and such. Making the comp scene a publicity game and one that places so much emphasis on a single number keeps dragging ever aspect of comp down because of individuals who go too far. Sorry for the rant, but I really love this game and I hate watching it fall apart because of itself.
Popular team emerges, win a few comps then disband. Win championships, they all turn out to be racist. No team last longer than 5 months Splatoon comp is doomed.
Dude, the amount of times back in splat 2 where I heard people be like "don't stream scrims because it gives our competition free info" was ridiculous. The western scene for the past few years has been more concerned with making sure other players don't get to their level instead of trying to get others and themselves to a higher level, and it's really starting to show now.
So you're saying that even Splatoon players had "Save that Shit for Nationals"?
@@lieutenantpepper3421 ya, absolutely
@@lieutenantpepper3421 yes! But thing is that it actually ended up being really harmful for the community
People were even doing this in Splatoon 2 but I think it was only the very top level teams because they wanted to practice for world championships. You even had people hacking the Splatoon 3 splatfest demo to look into all of the maps before the very first Splatoon 3 NA championship to get an edge over the other teams.
@@ipromiseimtrying It wasn't particularly helpful for the FGC, either.
Hey, I'm the person DUDE talks about in the first few minutes of the video, first of all, I didn't think my tweet would have so much impact, otherwise I would have worded it better and even strengthened my arguments, but as I said, I just tweeted on a whim because my Splatoon 2024 year was almost over when I made the tweet (I had just finished my last 2024 tournament) and I wanted to express my thoughts before 2025 started. I watched your entire video and would like to clarify a few points you made:
- Content
You're mostly right about content creation, and I'm the main suspect here, I've been around for a while and never truly focused on building an audience or sharing my knowledge, I've done a bit of content in the past but stopped due to lack of motivation and time, but now, especially after hearing your, Chara's, and fuzzy's opinion on streaming and creating TH-cam videos, I understand where you're coming from. However, as you said, we're all getting a bit older and we all have our IRL responsibilities now, for someone like me, I'm not sure it's worth the time and effort to devote to TH-cam content at this specific time of Splatoon 3's lifetime, personally I feel like my own passion for this sort of thing has died out, but I'll never know until I try. I know my games reviews helped a lot of people back then (6 years ago Jesus), but I'm not sure this kind of content would still be popular nowadays and it wasn't hot even then. Streaming is easier, and there's really no excuse because you just click a button and play the game, but the content is either X-Rank SoloQ or Tourneys/Scrims, which can bore people after a while and I don't know if it will help the scene in the long run one way or another. Don't get me wrong, creating content would certainly help, but back then a lot of people streamed simple stuff and downloaded pretty much everything without editing, which worked, but today I feel like people consume Splatoon (and video games in general) a lot more differently than they used to, and I don't think the same “easy” content would work these days, at least on TH-cam. If someone wants to get into content creation, as you said, they have to work by themselves like you did, it's not your duty to babysit them at all, but these days I get the impression that it's a lot harder to get into content creation, at least in Splatoon, which might explain why so few people are actually doing anything, especially since Splatoon 3 is ending, but I hope people will feel motivated when Splatoon 4 comes out, that will be the big turning point for the community.
- Teams and Identity
I have mixed feelings about this, we didn't have any real teams at the end of Splatoon 1 and that was one of our most active time for the playerbase, I feel like that didn't stop people from enjoying the game or clicking on the streams. I understand your point that, as an outsider to the Splatoon community, you just want to recognize names to feel invested, team names like NSTC, Alliance Rogue, Kraken Paradise or Team Olive all ring a bell for former members of the community, that's for sure, and that kind of thing doesn't exist these days in our current scene. In a perfect world, you're right that we should all stick together and make ourselves marketable but in reality our scene is still amateur with young people and people with different ambitions towards the game, so it feels impossible to really achieve that goal. However as a player, I think it's a good thing we don't have “teams”, we've stayed in our own comfort zone with the same players and this has created other hidden problems within our scene, but that's another topic. I had a lot of fun playing with very different people in the tournaments and I regret not having done so earlier simply because I had to play with my team, but of course that's just my view and opinion, overall I feel there's a compromise to be made here. Personally I feel like the issue might reside in the quality of tournaments and overall state of the game, it's hard to want to build anything when there isn't anything to look forward to besides a couple weeklies. For example my team Alliance Rogue rings a bell to everyone in the FR/EU community because we built this team in order to compete in Nintendo Events (French/EU Championship and we went to Worlds), even the "major" tournaments or LANs don't really happen frequently enough, like maybe once every 6 months, so by that time people will lose motivation and quit, maybe you want to try a different team composition so you switch teammates for a tournament etc... And that's not the TO's fault at all, in France especially we are spoiled because we have orgs like EsportBrosTV that's been managing a league with about 12 divisions and 10 teams per divisions for like 8 years which is insane and they're hosting several tournaments for the European scene alongside a yearly LAN event in France. But in Europe especially, it's rough out there, it's tough with Nintendo griefing us with the official tournaments forcing us to play with players from our country only, considering the playerbase in Europe is already so small. And we're the lucky ones in France/UK/German cause we have a big enough playerbase allowing us to have LANs (Fullwipe/Breeze/RSL) and in general just people playing the game but the community in any other EU country is way too small sadly.
I'm not too sure about the US but I remember they had a lot of orgs doing great stuff (InkTV/EndgameTV) for the West community as a whole but most of them quit probably due to a lack of motivation (not sure). On the bright side, Sendou is doing something fantastic in my opinion with SQ Major because you have to attend tournaments and gather points for 3 months with the same 4 players to qualify for the major so there is a very good compromise here (Players sticking together and attending several tournaments, and something to look forward to every 3 months).
To conclude, as DUDE said, we've known each other since Splatoon 1 and we both want the scene and especially the competitive side of things to thrive, I didn't mean to “doompost” or anything like that, far from it, I love Esports, I've played a lot of competitive games (COD, Overwatch, Valorant, Rainbow6Siege, even recently Marvel Rivals and more) and seeing their scene (much bigger than ours) or even just the Japanese side of Splatoon (the same game we all play), I just feel like we've been missing out on a lot all this time, and since I've been around since 2015, I was there at the peak of the game (end splatoon1 - middle splatoon 2) and I can only feel sad today when I look at the current state of things. I said it in my original tweet, but I love the game, I'm not exhausted, but whether you're a competitive player or a casual member of the community, I feel like the scene isn't really great for either person. It's not all doom and gloom, though; this is a transitional phase and I'm convinced that things will improve.
And to be clear, it's nobody's fault in particular, it's a big vicious circle that I don't know how to fix, we need people to play the game, to create content, we need tournaments, we need Nintendo's help. The game's doing really well on the Japanese scene, but it's sad in the West, even more in Europe. I feel like nobody has the power to fix it on their own, we have to work together and again, I just want people to have fun and enjoy the game, and nobody wants the game to succeed more than me.
Thanks for reading 😊
Je suis d'accord à propos du contenu. C'est sur que c'est très intéressant d'avoir des vidéos qui explique et donnes des astuces pour s'améliorer et comprendre la scène compétitive de Splatoon, mais tout le ne monde ne peux ou ne veux pas se lancer dans ce genre de contenu. Avoir une présence sur Internet (X, Twitch, etc.) devrait être le minimum histoire que les gens puissent te retrouver, mais le reste devrait être simplement un choix personnel !
Whole lotta yapping
Identity is a huge thing. You can track progress and stories for years in some other competitive games.
Also, I agree about content. I wish there was more. I speak mainly from a Salmon Run perspective, but I would love to watch competitive/PvP content more often.
I'd watch so much matches where a pro player explains their thought* process and decision making
Especially if they're narrated so I can draw while I hear them
Yo Cephalorock! Been awhile
Narration esp omfg I’d love that
I checked my history and I can't find the video since I probably saw it too far back this year, but those definitely exist
dunno if the one I watched was narrated or not though
*actually I found it not even a minute after sending that cause I remembered that I put it in a note lol
th-cam.com/video/iF1ACmIXYJg/w-d-xo.html
I come from a FGC background, and most of the games I play are far smaller than Splatoon. I think the most important thing to keeping a smaller scene alive is to understand what your niche is and what you can realistically do in that niche. Splatoon does have it a lot better than I think a lot of you realize, but the one thing you can't do is sit around and expect things to happen for you if you don't put the work in.
This is why I subbed to DUDE. He is offering solutions and how we can fix things. Just make content! Get things out. That’s how we keep competitive Splatoon alive.
yknow what? fuck it. i don't play splatoon outside of comp now, so i might as well actually make comp videos finally. i've always been too scared to because i thought i wasn't good enough, but yeah, different points of views from different levels are huge for the scene, and ill definitely go for it
Cool, I'll be subbing to your channel, so you better not let me down and post some comp videos!
I’ve said this before but it baffles me how little people who play this game for thousands of hours seem to want to talk about it
Yeah it’s a good point but it varies with every person, some just use it as a hobby to chill, some don’t know or can’t make content for a few reasons. Plus it’s very intimidating to start as a small channel
13:21 This is very true. I'm subscribed to a lot of Japanese players because they post non-stop splatoon content compared to the West. A lot of Japan's top-level players post their content on youtube. I might not understand Japanese, but I do understand how the game works.
Same.
sometimes I even try to join their games despite the language barrier 😓 cause they’re the only ones I know abt
Do you have any recommendations? I'm not familiar with Japanese players at all but I'd love to start watching some :D
Preferably some who play a lot of backlines, since I struggle to find those players even on the western side :')
@dami_damien Backpacking on this, for I followed a few Japanese players on and off and have several recommendations.
Pyon: @/Pyon_1007
I first found out about him from a very old scrim Brian from Team Olive uploaded and have been following him since then. He normally plays backline and is superior with the Charger/E-liter. If I remember correctly, he has participated in lots of tournaments before.
Lobstar: @/lob_star_
So, I recently found this phenomenal Blaster player who blew my mind with his style of gameplay. I’ve never seen such a player who excels at everything: from aim, to movement control, to game sense… Watching him play will not only make you a better Blaster player, but it will also help you improve in general from learning how he SEES the game.
Nana: @/nanatoman
Finally, there is a player I want to recommend not just because of high-level plays, but because his humor struck a chord with me. He mains the roller but has tried playing other weapons before. There was a phase where he was trying to get good at the N-zap, but was failing so badly in every consecutive match. He has another upload where he was matched with a disastrous team, but they somehow made an insane comeback in the last 30 seconds of the match. He’s really entertaining, and he uploads often, too.
Anyway, keep clicking on those videos uploaded by these players and the algorithm will recommend you more videos in a blip. If you want to learn more about other weapon classes or a specific weapon guide, all you have to do is go onto gamefavo.com/db/splatoon/weapon-list/, copy the weapon’s name, paste it into the search bar and add “スプラトゥーン” behind it.
Fun fact: I still haven't found out way, but the main Splat shooter is called "すし" (Sushi) for some reason. I’ve watched quite a number of players so I’m more or less familiar with the terms they use for callouts.
@dami_damien Backpacking on this, because I followed a few Japanese players on and off and have several recommendations.
Pyon: @/Pyon_1007
I first found out about him from a very old scrim Brian from Team Olive uploaded and have been following him since then. He normally plays backline and is superior with the Charger/E-liter. If I remember correctly, he has participated in lots of tournaments before.
Lobstar: @/lob_star_
So, I recently found this phenomenal Blaster player who blew my mind with his style of gameplay. I’ve never seen such a player who excels at everything: from aim, to movement control, to game sense… Watching him play will not only make you a better Blaster player, but it will also help you improve in general from learning how he SEES the game.
Nana: @/nanatoman
Finally, there is a player I want to recommend not just because of high-level plays, but because his humour struck a chord with me. He mains the roller but has tried playing other weapons before. There was a phase where he was trying to get good at the N-zap, but was failing so badly in every consecutive match. He has another upload where he was matched with a disastrous team, but they somehow made an insane comeback in the last 30 seconds of the match. He’s really entertaining, and he uploads often, too.
Anyway, keep clicking on those videos uploaded by these players and the algorithm will recommend you more videos in a blip. If you want to learn more about other weapon classes or a specific weapon guide, all you have to do is go onto gamefavo, copy the weapon’s name, paste it into the search bar and add “スプラトゥーン” behind it.
Fun fact: I still haven't found out way, but the main Splat shooter is called "すし" (Sushi) for some reason. I’ve watched quite a number of players so I’m more or less familiar with the terms they use for callouts.
Competitive players making videos is your best point imo. I do love watching some good splatoon gameplay and also try to see what i can learn from a player better than me at the game. But i just don‘t know any that upload…
Omegazidan from Moonlight is great for this! Love his content
Real! especially if you’re wanting to watch a specific weapon it can be hard to find content on them!
There are a lot of comp players uploading, they’re just mostly all under 1k subs so it’s hard to find. It isn’t that there is a lack of them, just that they’re not as popular so the average player doesn’t know about these smaller creators.
Smash has creators like GR Smash and AsumSaus, and Dragonball FighterZ has MoldyBagel. These are examples of people that don't compete at all in their games, yet make excellent content that shows why comp is cool and interesting, and they get people into the scene. I think Splatoon needs more of this sort of thing.
Everything changed when Jackpot was exposed, comp reached its high when they won, and now, it's faded to obscurity.
It's also, why I can't really blame Nintendo for not supporting the competitive scene more. Because when they do, shit like Jackpot happen.
I quit splatoon a few years ago…recently stumbled upon this video and comment…anyways, what happened with jackpot? I heard they won the world championship but that’s about it
@agarcia6770 Their members got exposed for saying racist remarks. Those were horrible times. I'm now triggered by 777 now.
You're so right about high level players talking about the game & it's mechanics!! I watch you and chara and it truly does help me get better, as well as inspire me to try new things & think about the game more critically. It's nice being able to help my friends that play casually & tell them things about weapons, gear abilities & maps!!
If people don't want competitive splatoon to die then you need ways for casual, low level & medium level players to get interested passionate!!! Also I think that if comp players intermingled with splatoon artists more it'd be more alive, artists are passionate after all. Happy new years DUDE!!! :D
MASSIVELY appreciate this video from you DUDE, I think a lot of people are just saying "it's not dying" without elaborating on the improvements that can be made or diagnosing why it is some people feel that way. It's so easy to be toxically positive or blindly dooming and glooming, so hearing your thoughts is not only important and appreciated, but super useful for the scene. Thanks again for making this video!!
Well spoken, motivational and inspirational. Also 5:20 🫶
As a mid-average player I couldn't agree more with you dude ! i feel so sad there is not a lot of splatoon content out there, I wish luck to everyone who will start a channel soon :)) I d love to see if you ll make a video about all those new content creator some day !
I feel like despite the variety the game gives, we dont play with that variety enough. New players will find a weapon they like, then immediately look at meta and then feel they won't make it. When you look at the opinions of JP and the West, there can be stark differences in how weapons are valued. Now ofc we can't blame certain weapons from being better than others; but unless its your main, having to use specific weapons all the time will get boring for people. Then comes the fissure of "this is a meta weapon" or "my favorite weapon isn't worth to push". This mindset will discourage and its probably why the West has more casuals or mixed between casual and a little comp. But definitely more casual leaning. Its like being in a rotating cube where a player may get the urge to try but then look at the skills of a top player and just fall to a completely different mindset than before - and it will take a bit before returning to that initial motivation.
Instead of trying to be good, most are feeling that they just have to "fit in" which isn't all that exciting. Thirds kits could have been a double edge sword tbh.
Anyway, I'm not a top player or anything. Just a consistent S+ but its often what I see. I personally play chargers. And even though Eliter isn't meta I still play it. Try to adapt with it. It is my favorite charger. Sure, I could Pencil. I love Pencil since its release. But there has to be more than just hearing or seeing the same things over and over at times. Win or lose, you have to have some fun in order to keep anything alive in a game.
I'm in exactly the same boat but with splatlings. I love Heavy, it's been my main for the entire game, but whenever I dabble into competitive stuff I get forced into playing Edit instead. I like Edit and I'm not bad with it but it's not what I really want to be doing
@@glan9 playing weapons that dont make you feel anything when you play them is the easiest route to losing interest with the game
if you want to play heavy, if heavy makes you want to improve, then play heavy. if the people on your team dont want you on heavy but you want to push heavy, find a new team fr unless you prioritise the team idk
@@glan9 Same with most charger players and pencil. Yeah, Pencil is great. We know it's great. But comp can't be akin to sardines in a can.
Do what you want first. Even if it's hard, do it for your enjoyment. May not be meta but make your pro plays anyway
H3 is my favorite weapon and I wanna build a team around it at some point
@agentblackbird9435 Definitely give it a try. We need more weapons to show off!
Put emphasis on the scene being hard to follow. I can't tell you how many times I'd watch a splatoon video about anything competitive related, and they'd make a comment saying "The HUGES tourney just got completed" Like huh? There was a tourney? When? No one streamed it, no one mentioned it. Keeping track of the meta is even harder. I remember the transition of Ballpoint to Zooka meta. I was happy Ballpoint was good, the zooka buff was a few weeks ago. Then BAM, triple shot. What? No on said anything, why are they better then ballpoint? Zooka shoots down inkjet, but no thought process of why TRIPLE zooka is the best option. Things change so fast yet no coverage on anything besides the little bit Prochara and others mention. Good video DUDE.
This is inspiring me to create splatoon content for myself
I've always wanted to be a competitive player, and you always help me and motivate me to continue even after a 20 lose streak. Thanks DUDE, one day I hope to snipe like you man, don't give up and keep on going with your motivational speeches!
Chargers, most fun weapon class in my opinion! 😁
I feel like people need to make more videos on Splatoon in general. No matter if you’re a comp player or not. I’ve been uploading ranked matches from my streams onto TH-cam from Splatoon 2 and 3 for 5 years now. I even have a side series I do called How I Play Splatoon 3 which in concept is literally just a copy of DUDE’s Tearing it Up series where I talk about my favorite weapons and how I play them. There’s so many resources from my own videos on how to play better, but just like how there’s not many comp players you can name off the top of your head, I also can barely think of any other people like me who upload ranked gameplay. LoveStar? That’s who I’m subscribed to and I’d subscribe and watch more if I knew of more people who did it! I love watching others play the game and I can build off of their strategies to make my own and get even better. I used to be so ass at the game until I started watching DUDE 7-8 years ago!!! People need to make more Splatoon content! I wanna see more Splatoon content! It’s literally just DUDE, Chara and sometimes some other smaller people on my radar.
Splatoon 3 is dying outside of Japan because the players outside of Japan want to play a game that does not exist. Splatoon 3 is what it is. There is no other version, no "project M" of Splatoon. Until there is, you *must* play the game that exists. That includes low-pick weapons for comp, clam blitz, "bad stages" and so on. If you want people to play the game, you have to show them the game. Just play the game.
you can make stage pools in private battles, and clam blitz is fun in coordinated play (there's no more kraken cheese)
great video. i remember watching splatoon 2 content very actively due to the fact that my favorite players made individual content. we'll just need to see what happens next
I think splatoon TH-camrs in general in the west is too serious and too negative about the game, not all of them of course. but really who wants to play a game after seeing a TH-camr complaining about the game non stop all the time?
“These weapons suck!!””worst stages Ever here is the reason why!!” etc etc..
I mean what’s the point? you guys want to increase subs and player base right? It’s almost self sabotage at this point it’s been like that for a long long time here in the west.
Healthy criticism about the game sure is necessary but it’s way beyond that.
I think you guys just need to play the game and have fun with it n share videos with viewers, then if player numbers increase so does competitive players too i believe.
sorry about ranting.
I've been thinking "No one is uploading Splatoon stuff! It would be the perfect time for people to start a channel!" since Splatoon 3 came out. Disappointed that it never went anywhere. It doesn't just apply to competitive, but also to casual content. I'm pretty sure we only gained like 5 new people in the community that started uploading Splatoon related videos, and even when they do, they only upload once every 1 or 2 months or something. And for some reasons, the people that were already in the community before S3 were also uploading insanely slowly during the beginning of S3. There have been times where I straight up had to wait multiple weeks just to get to watch a new Splatoon related video. People could say "Well, but these people livestream all the time, so what's the issue?" The issue is that there's the "wrong" type of community in that. At that point, you're not contributing to the "Splatoon Community" but contributing to the "(Insert Streamer Here) Community." You barely even see people do collabs anymore. It's all just "I'm either playing alone recording a video" OR "I'm streaming with others, but I'm not making a video." And when people DO collab, the other people just exist somewhere in the video and are basically a background object rather than a person. I know editing is time consuming, but honestly? If people give their editing personality, I don't think most people would even care if it was ""low quality content."" Just don't make it boring and plain. That's all someone really needs. Look at Octoboy's old videos for example. The guy didn't even talk, yet got millions of views because of fun editing. Just uploading weird gameplay clips with some background music and light editing would already be a great start for new channels, and it wouldn't be that difficult to edit either. But, you know, you also need the equipment for it. A capture card, solid internet, a LOT of disc space, etc. So I can understand being hesitant to waste a lot of money on a hobby so that you can create something for a very small audience in an environment where seemingly no one in the community is actively trying to create a environment where other people can succeed. I've been watching you since the Splatoon 1 days, and your channel is actually the reason why i started learning English. Now the English speaking community is going through the same thing, where it feels like in order to play the game, you have to learn a different language.
Competitive is dying because is because I STOP PLAYING. Lol now for real, i believe the reason why Competitive is dying it's because we are in "that period "that spla2n went through updates being gone . In this case the recycling catalog, also the flat maps we got in this game play a big roll on why the game has become monotonous. Curious how in spla2n the meta and weapons became monotonous and in this case we got great and fun weapons but just a few good maps
If Splatoon went the Project M route where mods allowed third kits and Splatoon 3 stages to be improved (some of the stages just need paintable blocks and sponges) then I could see the scene thriving. However, Nintendo is known to be stingy about mods so no one knows how long this would last
I appreciate you for your talks about things like this and also a desire to help all of us newer players to improve ourselves.
I know things do happen and people change their interests to other things and I do want to continue more even though I’ve got a new love with Fortnite and kind of not have as much fun playing the same players over and over in Anarchy. I’m sure it’s just a phase but I still enjoy playing any in the Splatoon series.
Oh and one more thing I am playing more rainmaker and taking to heart what you taught us about how to move it in each of the maps . Again thank you for your positivity and I’m not going anywhere. Who knows? I might try streaming some time this year. We will see.
What good points, in splatoon 3, I look up pro players or west tournaments, and I don't find anything. I find it so hard to find content around the game. Omega and Chara streams come in clutch. Love those long, vod dumb vids :D
i really wish there were more ways to get into comp causally! i don't mean this as in joining the comp scene i just wish there were more places to watch competitive play
I feel like top players making content won't be helpful in light of Grey's Tweet. Like Grey said, it's the same thing again and again. Like, what Top Player can I see play something unorthodox? Or what team can I see that won't play Pencil or 52? The reason why King's Cup was interesting to me was cause teams used Naut 47, Forge Pro, and Long Rapid of all things. There's definitely the staples like Stamper, 52, etc. but there was diversity.
In the west, I can think of Chase the Dualie guy but he alone can't save the scene. I can think of you playing with different weapons here and there and Sniper Sundays. But what else?
I feel like the west is very dependent on top level players and will not even touch content makers of low and even mid level players because they "may not be good enough." Oh you have
This
Well put together, everything you said is true and definitely NEEDED to be talked about
But here's 1 factor that I've seen push away people a bit
The community itself can be pretty insufferable at times. Running the same annoying jokes from years ago, the whole thing about people gatekeeping VODS, lack of rolemodels since a lot of high level players can be really toxic and egotistical, rage bait being everywhere, Twitter being the main site the community resides on (and even Bluesky carrying over some of the same bad traditions)
This kind of stuff not only drives away players that were once enjoying their time, but they also give Splatoon a bad look for outsiders. There's a LOT of people that automatically assume you're a weird person for even enjoying Splatoon, so imagine how they'd react if they heard you play it competitively.
There's also the fact that a lot of people just force themselves to play Splatoon because they have "something to prove" but don't actually enjoy the game. They end up getting frustrated or angry over small things, and are VERY vocal about it, but never think to stop playing. This isn't unique to Splatoon of course, but I feel like the issue happens the most with this compared to a lot of other ones, though that may be just from my own experience.
I recognize that a lot of this comes from the fact that a good chunk of the competitive community is made of kids, which you don't really see as much in other competitive games, and they still have a lot of growing up to do so they're prone for these things a lot more, but even some of the adults can act rather childish in these situations
Overall, this kind of stuff prevents growth. I like your ideas for what to do but it'd be pretty hard to go around with those unless these issues get figured out first.
everything you said is bang on and ive been waiting for someone to say this for a good while, thanks for this amazing video dude
Support from Hong Kong, Dude
It's a little wild to me that the focus is on "content" by several people in the comments when what dude is saying is there's a lack of conversations on how to bring people in and cultivate a competitive scene between various skill levels of players! It feels to me like by 3, the western community is too reactive to a small group of top creators, and I see this as an aspect of public spaces for the game being mainly twitter and youtube.
But I actually left 3 for pretendo last year and a major factor beyond hardware was that there was a dearth of written info and theory on 3 DESPITE having so many utilities for working on builds and strategy. This game feels very closely-guarded outside of social media.
8:50 You're absolutely right. You actually inspired me to get better (as well as chara and wadsm), all the tech that was shown was so sick. Other pro players need to post on youtube and have identities present in the community.
HDFG and Titally are putting out some really great content! We need more of that
big vouch for healthy diet food groups
Very very well said 🙏
I don't play comp as much anymore, but watching is my favorite thing. I'd love to get even more involved even if I'm not a player
Thank you for your insights. Defintiely should be heard throughout the competitive community!
Splatoon 4 Nintendo switch 2 will change everything
I'd love to watch comp Splatoon and everything you said is exactly why I feel like it's so hard to watch and care about, I never hear about it unless I go searching for it or Chara talks about something he participated in after it's over, and even when I do find it I have no idea what's going on or who anybody is so it loses interest quickly
You know that really put things into perspective in a way that like... I didn't even think about. Like I already had my jadedness to the splatoon community and comp but... Tbf I was apart of this issue just like the rest of us. And yeah not having a real identity that people can draw to makes it hard for folks to well draw connections especially for those outside looking inward. There needs to be something recognizeable again and there also just needs to be more content out there. Honestly I kinda wish I did do my lil series when s3 came out going over fundamentals to help new and remind old players of things. But well, irl stuff happened and anxieties be a bitch LOL (Especially cause something like that really needs to be carefully constructed with thorough research, things I don't have time for)
But even then like, there's just a lot of issues and it's something that needs to be solved as a collective both for casual and comp splatoon if I'm HONEST. Coming from someone who still enjoys playing and has played since the 1st game...
Hey, DUDE! I absolutely loved the video, and I totally agree with you. As a community, we definitely need to do more to help grow the game in the Western scene. People like you and Chara really inspire me to continue developing as a content creator and to produce content for the (competitive) community. While my main focus has been on promoting the German scene, I hope that with more time, I’ll be recognized beyond just being known as one of the competitive players.
Great video, awesome points. Imma start recording splatoon content cuz I've been wanting to for ages and I just need to do it XD no excuses anymore, we gotta do this together as a community and stop relying so much on already established content creators
The last great era of competitive was during the ghost/olive vs kraken paradise rivalry
Yeah, the lack of definitive identities and personalities in the Westeen Splatoon community is a huge blind spot. I'm sorta reminded of the history of competitive Pokemon - which was hyper niche for a while, though players like Marriland and shofu got a lot of the initial early waves of people into the scene. Nowadays even more casual Pokemon fans who don't play comp at least know about WolfeGlick and Sejun Park, and a bunch of content creators like FalseSwipeGaming, Jimothy Cool, Moxie Boosted, Big Yellow, Freezai, BKC, blunder and Wolfey himself have made all forms of comp Pokemon (Singles and VGC and older formats from old generations) incredibly accessible and fun through their videos (though this is helped by Showdown existing and on cart comp training becoming more accessible each gen). Its something the western Splatoon community could take a page from tbh
Hi Dude
I never thought about
identity thing. I’ve been following you since 2017(not sure), and tried to look for other content creators, but couldn’t find anyone, I thought it was just because I’m not from a English speaking country(and we don’t have much creators in our country), which makes it harder to search or the algorithm simply doesn’t favor it, also I understand English pretty well but not Japanese
Until I started to search for Japanese players and found out how outnumbered creators from other regions are.
I totally agree with the identity thing, if people do not know how others think or don’t even see others playing the game, it’s hard to build there self identity too
I love how Dude always providing a looking for solution mind set at the end, never had I seen him complaining about his team mate, he just does everything he can do.
i agree with everything here. The number of high level Splatoon players (both competitive and non) who post content is abysmal. The only Splatoon videos that appear on my YT frontpage are 3 competitive players (all of which were named in this video), and 5 non-competitive players. As someone who has played Splatoon since 2019, the competitive scene is VERY undiscoverable. a few other thoughts-
Nintendo gives significantly more attention to competitive in Japan. Japan also has way more Splatoon content creators than the west. And I feel like these two things are CORRELATED. Did we ever stop and think, maybe NoA and NoE give very little attention to Splatoon competitive simply because they dont see enough people who are interested?
This last one might be a hot take, but it is the truth everyone needs to hear: Splitting X Battles into Takaroka and Tentatek divisions is the single worst decision made in Splatoon 3, and functionally it did the exact opposite of what was intended. And the 2nd worst decision Splatoon 3 made was having "Anarchy Series" separate from "X Battles" -- there are too many different queues, so of course it takes forever to find a lobby, and of course you constantly play the same people
I have been wanting to follow competitive Splatoon players and I'm like... where do I follow? Like is there a hub to keep up with it? I see lots of Splatoon fanart on social media, even Splatoon zines, but as a casual player I never randomly encounter anyone advertising talking about competitive Splatoon events in the community. I only find out after the fact from the few (like 5) Splatoon youtubers that talk about it afterwards. So yeah... ^_^; Because no one outside of the competitive scene talks about competitive Splatoon events I just never bothered to pay attention.
Be the change you want to occur!
I just wish that the game had more recognition in the west and that Nintendo would push for that to happen like hosting big tournaments like they used to but they’re been lacking for a while now.
I've been saying "chimera" wrong my whole life. You can always learn something from Dude.
I kinda stopped playing splatoon 3 recently but it’s not because the comp scene or just the game in general is boring, it’s not that, it’s just because there’s like multiple other games to be playing aswell right now, among other things, I’ve been playing a lot of ‘The Finals’ and Fortnite recently instead, but I still am an active splatoon artist and play a little bit
I think of the youtuber elis where they started to bridge the Western an JPN community together to their content, thought that was kind of cool!
I would love to get into comp and make a team, but I don’t have much time at all and honestly the lack of recognizable top teams kind of discourages me. I found 2 people I play really well with and I’m pretty sure we’re in the same time zone, but the main problem is that all of us main Decavitator so we can’t really get anywhere with that.
Edit: I’ve been getting into ttek and other support weapons more recently, and Kiver is honestly goated
If someone wants to try something new, try competitive Salmon Run Overfishing! Should be something fairly different to try and get good at.
Played with S1 vets when I started to get into S3 Ranked, played with others who were willed to play the game with me. Each time they seemed to get annoyed by me because I couldn't keep up. As much fun as Splatoon is, why would I bother about going anywhere other than playing soloq and getting beaten up because "Match Making" punishes me after five rounds of hidden Power calculations?
My take, and I know DUDE's mentioned it already.
I still feel like Nintendo is partly to blame for this. All their events, tournaments, hell even challenges, are all specifically targetted towards the Japanese region only.
And this is a constant thing they do. If I were a competitive player, or team player, and checked the NSO App, saw a tournament qualifier challenge, only with the bracket (Japan), I'd just get sad. Nintendo doesn't push Splatoon as hard anywhere else except for Japan, and while I get it, Nintendo is located there, it's also a company with a shit ton of money.
Instead what they do, is made these changes to fan-made tournaments a while back which probably didn't sit well with many comp players, and the rest is just a whole mess.
Why not give the rest of the world official things to participate in? Probably too late for it now but, for whenever Splatoon 4 gets released.
Maybe there's more going on than I might know myself, I don't actively follow competitive splatoon, but just as an observer, this is how it feels.
We just have to hope Splatoon 4 is a year 1 game on Switch 2. The game needs 6v6, 8v8, and 4v4v4v4 modes. Spice this thing up.
Well said, as usual
I think people are convinced they have to have crazy Mr. Beast editing throughout the whole video. But honestly, past the first 1 or 2 minutes, definitely not. And heck: maybe even not at all. Especially if the video has educational value, which tons of pro players have to provide to the masses. Like it could even be Windows Movie Maker honestly.
5:15 bro named off every player/team in my head in the correct order 😭
Ik it was talked about but I feel like western splatoon started being very secretive and started gatekeeping a lot so much so to the point where it’s very difficult to try to get to a higher level not to mention with a lack of anything new for splatoon three at the moment there’s not much to incline people to try comp other then the new lans and the community is also in a rough spot there’s a lot that needs to change in some of that regard
People are used to GaaS. When the service dies for 2-3 years so does player engagement. I honestly believe Splatoon 4 might be a 2025 game though. Switch was released in March 2017 and Splatoon 2 came out in July that year. Arguably Splatoon 2 was a port and additional content. So Splatoon 4 could be summer this year. I think the big feature would be 4 player split screen and 4 player coop for campaign and 'Side Order' roguelike mode. Oh and a graphics bump. This seems like the sort of thing that could be quickly cranked out. All that said, I don't agree with Nintendos 2 years on, 2 years off content strategy. Splatoon deserves permanent quarterly content updates.
Don't think so; there are only so many fun sub weapon possibilities for each weapon, and Melee's scene is kicking despite Nintendo not having an eye on its content at all
@dewroot5176 I think this could be affected by genre and competition. I don't see any good smash competitors but I think GaaS games like Fortnite do pull players from Splatoon. Also, as much as I love Splatoon I don't think squid people are cool. I don't think the Nickelodeon vibe is a positive either. It's all weird. Smash has the industries biggest mascots and music from all these big franchises. It's just not a good comparison.
One thing I want to mention is that you want to reach many people as possible on your contet so you have to speak english. But that is a problem in Europe because many people can understand english but speaking while you're live sucks and you think more about your grammar and pronounciation than actual playing the game. (for me personally)
Ill be back for Splat 4.
I'm not a pro player or anything like that, but I do stream occasionally. After seeing your video, I do feel motivated to stream now. Even if I aint some pro. I do have thoughts I like to share.
Honestly dude , I don’t like how every season u get deranked , it don’t encourage me to keep playing competitive to level up , cuz my level just gunna reset when the new season comes
Dude what team are you on for frosty fest?
Two moons mentioned👀
Yup, i played EBTV Saison 3 div 10 I m not stronger but I played with my main Bloblobber.
After finished the season my team got broken.
I leaved the comp because of some feeling i ve got like Grey's says.
I felt bored, bored to fight against the same weapons.
No one take risk. No one want to play atypic weapons and show something diferent, yes it s possible to play very good.
All of west only play the same meta that felt boring as hell.
i ve thinkin to play on Takoraka but from Portugal my connexion isn't good i ll get more instability and disconnexion destroying my fun.
Anyway it s an interesting post and your opinion s really good to understand better this scene.
Thanks.
Ps:You re a bit younger than me 5 or 6 years i think but you re so fucking cool to listening.
Honestly I would start streaming right now if I had the tech to do so. Back in splatoon 1 I actually made a couple TH-cam videos haha funny enough when I was a kid I wanted to be like Zackscottgaming lol.
I’ve been thinking of starting but I feel it’s too late/no point to make content now. And that I should wait till splatoon 4 if I want to do it
Most people eventually get bored. I love Splatoon but I get burned out, especially because the battle passes are so unbelievably grindy.
For the battle pass (i assume you mean the season catalogue?), you just win once a day to get that first-win boost. The next wins raises the bar slower, so if you can spare 30 mins per night even just doing a Turf War battle, it should be doable without it feeling like a drag.
@@jjQlLlLq Some people are super busy, though the only reason I find the battlepass gameplay problematic is because I don't enjoy splat 3 as much
@@dewroot5176 If you're pretty good at turf, it'd even only take ~5 minutes. At night in the toilet instead of scrolling cancerous social media full of doomposting lol.
And get a turfing buddy; multiplayer gaming is way less lonely, unfun & grindy with a partner. Or better yet, with a friend. I've done ranked as a quad-chump team with teammates. Just have a silly time once in a while, even actually trying to make it work
@@dewroot5176 That said it's fair to just entirely wanna change palate to a whole different game or whatnot. In my initial comment I was just pointing out that the catalogue isn't as painfully grindy as it seems if y'know the way
@jjQlLlLq I can max out an Apex Legends or Fortnite season with 1/4th the amount of playtime. It's the lack of weekly/daily skill based missions that give a lot of points that make it so tedious. Logging in to get a win 40 different days or playing 30+ hours of matches is way too time consuming.
DIVA DOWN !!!!!!!!
Saying a game is dead is like saying soccer is dead because baseball came out
maybe its that there's just more casual players too idk, people that in general only play it for fun and not comp
Hey, long time comp Splatoon lover here. I've been watching competitive Splatoon since the halcyon S1 days, and seeing this topic appear more and more, I would like to share a viewpoint of someone who watches the content you talk about in this video as well as share my general thoughts on the state of the game. It would be very interesting to hear what other players think in comparison to my own thoughts, as I obviously come from a very different perspective as mostly just a viewer.
Tl;dr: The game has design issues that players alone can't solve, and it needs changes from developers to thrive. How far do you think the players can improve the quality of the game's life by encouraging diversity?
It's really cool that you and other comp players are encouraging others to experiment and bring variety to the table. S3's lifetime for me was certainly not an interesting one. S3 feels very stifled in how it allows the players to express different skills, and that's in part due to the game's core design (maps and weird kits on half the weapons). I believe it's one of the top reasons why there isn't as much variety as people would hope. Having actually watched recent videos of X soloQ with non-meta weapons, I must say that they look very frustrating to play with because they just don't have enough optimization on their own that the cramped maps require, even if the players using them were really good. About half the weapons in the game just don't have the juice unless you have an environment completely different from the current meta. I'm sorry that I have to bring up the abused map issue, it's just... it's an issue at least in some capacity.
There's also an issue for me personally that S3 is not something everyone can enjoy WATCHING. (This is in part why casual content has shriveled up dramatically - something that imho gets underestimated a lot as a source of new viewers. Not to mention that the game is aggressively bad for casuals). A tourney where only "weak" weapons like Aero, RB, Swig etc are allowed? Count me in! The matches all take place on mostly same-looking maps and virtually no ways to play off of the main gameplay gimmick? Not very good. This is unfortunately something that cannot be fixed by the players completely. Some people enjoy this design and some don't, that's fair, but i would be lying if I said that it's not as engaging as S1 or even some decent S2 maps.
What do you think about this? How much do you think players can do for the game for it to thrive and not count on developers to add more QoL changes? I would gladly watch players try something new for sure.
Many factors are at play here.
Splat 3 is the hardest of the 3 games to play. Very fast, and very easy to lose due to a minor mistake.
Low level still does a horrible job at teaching newcomers. (Turf war is trash + Special spamming with areo or jr.)
Maps are trash.
Modes are trash.
Weapons, while balanced, feel underwhelming and dull. (Same for the kits)
Other pvp or pve competitors exist here and are largely more popular.
The series overall is still lacking basic features other games have.
And more.
What are some missing features shooter-game players take for granted?
also, yeah, if you're afraid of how strong burst bomb is, lower its 35-dmg radius and throwing range, maybe increase sprinkler's throwing range
@dewroot5176 basic matchmaking for starters. Splatoon wants to be weird with its matchmaking when just a simple queue up and select your weapon alongside teammates would work perfectly fine.
Like, queue times are already terrible in 3, especially in X battle. That would at least be fine if the matchmaking was good, but it isn't.
Map and mode rotations are still here and are still awful. At least show which map will be played, so you can pick a weapon accordingly.
Lack of communication options. No voice chat is obvious, but most other pvp or pve games also have a message system and/or a lot of preset messages to say things like: "The enemy is on the left flank!" or "The enemy is behind us!" While Splatoon still only has "This way" and "Booyah" as the only option.
The perk system in 3 is also atrocious. Takes forever to grind for abilities due to the randomness.
I remember the Chimera days.
DUDE
Rezb1t
Sorapol
Sendou if I remember correctly
Good points but IMO this just boils down to the player base size. Nintendo doesn't really like to support their multiplayer scene on a global scale and doesn't want to improve things like net code and etc. This leads to a smaller player base. If we had a bigger player base there would be greater competition across all levels and more content creators that would make regular tutorials.
Spark disbanded?
no they're still playing
yeah they're called retroma paradise now
they played in paddling pool a week ago
yeah they're called blaeksprutter now
Yes
Yeah you, chara, and chase are the ones that inspired me to get better and get S+ rank and stuff not saying that’s a big achievement but this my first ever Splatoon that I took seriously and played I had s2 but it was a game my friend threw in when he was saling his old switch cause he got a new one so it wasn’t on my radar ive watched it competitively when it first dropped and was excited about it but never played much of it so thank you for what you do and I wish I was good enough to make the west better just don’t have the time for it is all.
Great video. Not sure if this has been said in the comments yet, but don't forget that Elon's changes to Twitter/X made a lot of players feel unsafe or uncomfortable, leading to a mass exodus away from the platform to BlueSky. However, not everyone is there yet, and the community is now split. The only places to talk about and share Splatoon-related discourse are now private or hard-to-access communities like Discord. This really hurt the main component of the community, which are the competitive spectators and casual-competitive players that kept the numbers high.
I live in Japan, and every time I talk to Japanese people about Elon Musk, they don't even know that he did anything to change Twitter besides the name. They are still there. We need another agreed central hub again. If that's going to be BlueSky, the platform needs to seriously get to the same level as Twitter in regards to media and content sharing.
I wanna get into comp, just can’t put much time due to cool leg
DIVA DOWN !!!!!!!
Havent wanted to play Splatoon in a while, and the game has been my whole world since 2015. It's even part of my username. I still love watching the content but actually playing the game? I can't. All the weapons I like using are bad and it makes it very hard to enjoy the game. Also im not trying to watch Splat Zones gameplay 24/7. Rainmaker and Tower Control are not that bad. Clam Blitz I understand, but it feels like the only modes in this game are turf war and zones.
5:52 i think about jackpot but uuuuhhhhhh....... UHHHHHHHHHH
Brother it's been dead
12:54 you know what else is massive?
This fascination the scene has with being "e-sports" or with emulating Japan is partially what kills any form of identity. One of the most innovative shooters if not THE most innovative shooter we've ever seen is "unfortunately" a nintendo game & we have to deal with it. There's a stigma around nintendo's games being too kiddy from normies. This game isn't under blizzard or riot & isn't multiplatform.. it never will be & that's okay! The sooner competitive players lose this fascination with playing arenas like the ads seemed to promise all those years ago, the sooner the scene can accept what it is: a meme heavy, fun, unserious bunch who sometimes take a game seriously. Why is it everyone comes out of LAN events so hopeful & happy? The focus should be on that energy & magnifying it instead of fighting it. The locals seem to be on the right track :)
Shit dude you are the dude
competitive splatoon is dying because I shanked it in an alleyway sorry guys
The reason I barely play is bc I personally find all the maps unbearable to play in. No matter the rank mode. At least 2 had Piranhna Pit that don't matter the mode or if I lost terribly. I still ended up having fun.
The pr0 just wait f0r next gens 0f splat00n c0ntent(currently n0ne c0ntent but just casual & rank)
Speaking from personal comp experience, I believe the reason it is dying is because of the sheer toxicity of the community. Every team besides my first one back in d11-9 has ended because of people who just suck. I have left comp three times over the course of Splatoon 3 over random bs that other players pull. There is too much of an emphasis on divs and those being what your skill directly correlates to. Many people are immediately toxic towards ppl who are a dig lower than them, I will say I struggle with this myself, because of the over emphasis on it. The other issue is how people are constantly using each other to reach higher divs. Players push other players, even on the same team, down just so they can rise a little but. The mid level scene div3-5 range is far too toxic and players in div 1 and X just ignore it. Once players move up they never look back. I feel like this creates so much toxicity over perceived skill and doesn’t give players a chance to prove themselves in the game. The plus servers only exacerbate this issue with needing to be voted in and such. Making the comp scene a publicity game and one that places so much emphasis on a single number keeps dragging ever aspect of comp down because of individuals who go too far. Sorry for the rant, but I really love this game and I hate watching it fall apart because of itself.
i mean I'd argue it's due to the braindead balancing decisions (or lack of decisions) and poor maps but yeah sure that too
Not in japan
Hope not, would love to get to that someday. Greetings from usa.❤
Popular team emerges, win a few comps then disband. Win championships, they all turn out to be racist. No team last longer than 5 months Splatoon comp is doomed.
I buy and se people playing