#every time i post about squiffer it's like squiffer goes out of its way to prove me wrong or spite me its hilarious to me

[crest-of-gautier]

thinking very hard about eggstra work for chill season, i just have the strangest feeling that it'll have a charger + blaster in the line-up and that it'll coincide with reload's release just to laugh at me....

[skyplayssplatoon3]

Oh boy Splat3 being fun I hope this doesn't come off like a rant I'm just being thorough bc that community question post I'm so sorry if this is A Lot

Splatoon 3 veers between 'insanely, super fun' and 'not even remotely' on a near daily basis.

For what feels like the first time in the series' history the matchmaking and connection issues have synchronized to both be so bad that it feels like you barely get to play, and if you do play then you'll rarely get a fair fight and either play against a comp thats not fair for one side (IE triple e-liter and an inkbrush in splatzones) or against opponents with skill level that's unreasonably higher or lower than your team's.

Even with a wired connection I rarely last more than 3-4 matches at best before losing connection in the lobby and having to find new teams, and its not rare to have to go through the queue multiple times because of disconnects while waiting. This has never happened in 1 or 2 to me, back then I'd get maybe one or two a month. Now I get dozens in a week, and nearly everyone I play with does too.

Winning isn't everything but I've had remarkably few matches that felt... like actual matches. Most of my wins have been crushing curbstomps of people that felt like they just got the game or never had a chance because it was a quartet of chargers or whatever.

The same happens for my losses w/ them usually feeling like I went against a team of pro tournament players or being put with 1-3 other splatlings or chargers whenever I play a non-shooter, to the point I've nearly given up on playing my mains that I enjoy and just picked up TTek because I would constantly be curbstomped bc of tri-splatling + 1 squiffer comps and stuff like that outside of X Battle if I don't play a jack of all trades shooter (which, annoyingly, has a system to avoid exactly this problem that works perfectly but was never added to the normal modes)

Between all that and a multitude of minor things (Hero mode being a drop in quality from Splat2's, Splatfests being a noticeable downgrade from Splat2's, Big Run... feeling awkward the way it was handled, a number of balancing issues from launch like crab dominance and tentamissile spam, etc) the game feels more frustrating than ever before in the series when it goes badly despite it feeling better than ever when it goes well thanks to nearly every other facet of actually playing the game being massively improved

I have tons of fun when it feels like it works, but I've honestly just drifted to playing Salmon Run near exclusively because Salmon Run is consistently enjoyable w/o most of the above issues and usually the worst that happens is Nintendo going on a streak of really not fun comps to use (or it being Spawning Grounds, which isn't balanced for Splat3's new aggressive salmonids at all)

Totally fine to be thorough! I've been reading everyone's responses and really learning a lot about what people want out of this game

I'm glad you mentioned the 'Not fun to win' aspect of matchmaking, because I don't see it mentioned a lot: It's not always losing that's the problem, because it's equally not as satisfying to end up stomping new players because you and your X friends run out to try new weapons and still have built-skills over the years...We want people around our level to practice against!

I'm genuinely surprised to hear someone say Hero Mode was a downgrade; there's been so much praises sung (and I genuinely had a good time myself). However, still a valid opinion!

It absolutely is fun when things go right! The connection works, the matchmaking actually balances (rarely but it does for me), and even some losses feel fine because it felt like a fair match that we just came up short

I still say hold out a while longer for all the new goodies we should get! Hopefully things will improve with time, but I can see everyone's frustration as things stand right now