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[Nekketsu Kõha]

It doesn't help that the matchmaking is not regional. Playing against all Japanese players in Splatoon 1 was a terrible experience because you had a minimum of 200 ping if you were from Europe/US.

Mario Kart 8 has a higher tick rate than Splatoon 2 AND regional matchmaking. That a kart racer is better than a shooter in this regard is crazy.

Mario Kart 8 Deluxe is brilliant. Perfect really.

 

[Peltz]

I don't understand the sentiment that this affects competitive play.

Everyone's playing on 16hz so everyone's on a level playing field. If you get an unlucky death once in a match, you probably caused someone else an unlucky death in that same match. It's essentially the rules of the game.

There's nothing that prevents tournament play, or team play in a televised setting like we saw at E3. Competition will truck along just like it did before.

Everyone is playing under the same conditions, yes. But it does affect the overall balance of the game. Players that want to play evasively or defensively will be at a disadvantage.

Hiding behind walls is no guarantee of protection from snipers either. Basically, it makes the experience less reliable/predictable overall and levels the playing field for less skilled players to get cheap wins.

Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely TERRIBLE at this game (as I was with Splatoon 1). But I can totally see how this potentially lowers the skill ceiling for online play.

 

[UncleSporky]

Everyone is playing under the same conditions, yes. But it does affect the overall balance of the game. Players that want to play evasively or defensively will be at a disadvantage.

Hiding behind walls is no guarantee of protection from snipers either. Basically, it makes the experience less reliable/predictable overall and levels the playing field for less skilled players to get cheap wins.

Don't get me wrong, I'm absolutely TERRIBLE at this game (as I was with Splatoon 1). But I can totally see how this potentially lowers the skill ceiling for online play.

I dunno, I saw the video last page but for all we know this affects one in a million matches. I've hidden behind walls from snipers and been safe. I've gotten shot by snipers and it's been a totally legit hit.

I'm not sure to what extent this is something that could actually be exploited RE: "less skilled players getting cheap wins." Like...take shots you know you probably can't hit because you might hit them anyway due to the rate?

There are some competitive games where certain playstyles are less effective or minimized...if Splatoon 2 puts evasive or defensive players at a disadvantage (which I haven't really seen thus far, my main playstyle is to be relentlessly squirrely), then that's just a fact of the game. Competitive players will be aggressive because that's how you have to play it.

 

[rrs]

I've never noticed the tick decrease myself, feels about the same level of bullshit kills as in splat 1

 

[JershJopstin]

It depends on why they have a low tick rate in the first place. If they did it to save battery and make things work better when people are tethered to a mobile connection, then it would be as hard as dealing with the fallout when battery life drops and suddenly people can't play it reliably on the go (or slurp right through their data plan on the go).

I think that it is a "what is the Switch?" issue more than it is an issue with the bits on the disk, in other words. Is it more important that you can play on the train, or more important that you can rely on your reflexes to save you when you're caught out in the open in game?

If they also got dedicated servers (which feels like a pipe dream with Nintendo, admittedly), they could quadruple the tick rate and still be using little more than half the bandwidth as they are now, since each Switch would only be sending data to one server instead of 7 other Switches. It's very much possible to accomplish both goals at once, but Nintendo doesn't seem to see it as profitable to do so.

I dunno, I saw the video last page but for all we know this affects one in a million matches. I've hidden behind walls from snipers and been safe. I've gotten shot by snipers and it's been a totally legit hit.

I'm not sure to what extent this is something that could actually be exploited RE: "less skilled players getting cheap wins." Like...take shots you know you probably can't hit because you might hit them anyway due to the rate?

There are some competitive games where certain playstyles are less effective or minimized...if Splatoon 2 puts evasive or defensive players at a disadvantage (which I haven't really seen thus far, my main playstyle is to be relentlessly squirrely), then that's just a fact of the game. Competitive players will be aggressive because that's how you have to play it.

This affects every match to some degree. You don't seem to understand how this works, though. If you're shot from behind a wall by a sniper just after ducking behind it, it's not like the sniper shot at the ground where you were or something; on his screen, you weren't behind the wall when he took the shot. I've definitely seen my fair share of this (and probably dished out my fair share as well, not that I'd ever have a way of knowing). If you try to hide behind the wall at the last second, it just doesn't work half the time. It's particularly frustrating as a charger main, since I know the timing of the charge so well. In a sniping duel, I'll try to time it out so I'm always behind a wall when the other charger is charged, just to get shot through it anyway.

 

[Duffk1ng]

It does not bode well for the game competitively for the future. See this clip for a visual example of how this can be unfair.

WTF?!! That's the kind of crap that justifies DCs.

Pardon my ignorance but isn't this particular clip just latency fuckery and nothing at all to do with tickrate?

Tickrate would affect marginal, high impact cases where on your screen you've gone behind cover and you get splatted a moment later because it didn't update soon enough for your position to be correct according to the server/host (like with Roadhog's hook getting you behind cover in Overwatch). In this case the player was in cover far too long for tickrate to be a factor. This one's just latency.

 

[JershJopstin]

Pardon my ignorance but isn't this particular clip just latency fuckery and nothing to do with tickrate?

Correct, but the post you replied to didn't really mention that anyway

Which brings up something important: Even if Nintendo gets dedicated servers and ups the tickrate, it won't magically fix every laggy player's bad connections. Those players that you notice are laggy the whole match? They'd still be laggy. The changes being called for would be noticable, but would benefit the competitive scene where everyone should have good connections more than anyone else.

 

[Duffk1ng]

Correct, but the post you replied to didn't really mention that anyway

Which brings up something important: Even if Nintendo gets dedicated servers and ups the tickrate, it won't magically fix every laggy player's bad connections. Those players that you notice are laggy the whole match? They'd still be laggy.

Right, but I read the OP as insinuating this sort of situation is due to the tickrate and not connection quality.

I do think the low tickrate is a problem, but maybe less so for the average player. I get the feeling it would affect chargers primarily which are quite rare until you hit the A ranks and not seen too much in Turf War. I guess it could come into play with the slosher and maybe the rollers but they have slower projectiles at least which would make it feel less bullshit.

Perhaps it'll get stepped up once the game's initial popularity has settled down a little. I can live with the 16hz in Turf War as for the most part the most effective weapons in that mode aren't really heavily affected by it. I'd like to see it at least doubled for Ranked Play though as that's where all the chargers and insteadeath weapons become quite popular.

 

[Negotiator]

This explains why people who play on cell phone connections don't feel any lag.

" My connection is fine! ™"

Spoiler

Gets me every time

 

[Geg]

Apparently this article is starting to get some attention in Japan, with a somewhat popular esports team there tweeting about it, which means there's a chance these complaints will actually reach Nintendo now

 

[DeuceGamer]

I don't think this is Nintendo being incompetent as much as it was a thought out decision. Nintendo always wants to include as many people as possible and my guess is they done this so more people could play online without disconnects.

To be clear, I'm not defending the decision, just think it may be intentional rather than Nintendo not knowing what they are doing. Hopefully they change it so the competitive scene thrives, but I'm honestly not expecting it.

 

[Negotiator]

I don't think this is Nintendo being incompetent as much as it was a thought out decision. Nintendo always wants to include as many people as possible and my guess is they done this so more people could play online without disconnects.

To be clear, I'm not defending the decision, just think it may be intentional rather than Nintendo not knowing what they are doing. Hopefully they change it so the competitive scene thrives, but I'm honestly not expecting it.

And yet, many people complain about disconnections instead of blaming shitty connections.

WiFi 2.4 GHz is a huge mistake for online gaming. It should have never been allowed to begin with.