With Splatoon 2‘s second post-launch Splatfest finished and the results posted, some players are suggesting team bandwagoning is the reason for one of the game’s nautical emcees repeated losses.
The weekend’s superpower-themed battle had Pearl leading Team Flight and Marina overseeing Team Invisibility. To secure victory, teams have to win two of three categories: Popularity (which players choose which team to join), Solo Wins and Team Wins. Team Flight lost the popularity vote, but led the Solo (55 percent to 45 percent) and Team Win (52 percent to 48 percent) categories.
In the two Splatfests the game has seen in its late July release, Pearl has swept Marina 2-0, despite being the less popular team leader. During the first Splatfest which saw Pearl’s Team Mayo collect only 27 percent of team votes, while Marina’s Team Ketchup had 73 percent of the game’s participants. While the odds favored Marina based off the amount of players on her team, Pearl’s team proved more skilled.
Now, players are placing blame on others via social media for Marina’s losing streak, claiming that her popularity attracts lesser skilled Inklings. Besides the backlash against players who take Marina’s side, there is a variety of other issues the Splatoon fanbase is criticizing, such as Splatfest battles being thrown off by team popularity.
After the Team Mayo/Team Ketchup Splatfest, many players were frustrated with the matchmaking, partly because of Marina’s widespread popularity over Pearl. As result, Team Ketchup members were constantly pitted against other teams supporting the red condiment instead of fighting Team Mayo. Some members of Team Flight also experienced this during the most recent competition.
The other matchmaking issue players noted was balancing the skill levels of both teams. This time around, matches between teams would have large skill rating gaps, some users reporting about differences of 100-400 Splat Power, which they felt was unfair.
Weapon diversity is another problem the community is trying to change, so much that one weapon, the Tri-Slosher, having its own Twitter hashtag (#TriSlosher) and Twitter account devoted to nerfing the ink-dumping bucket. Another negatively-received weapon is the dualie class of faux-gun that Splatoon 2 introduced.
Since Nintendo regularly introduces new weapons and tweaks older ones to retain balance across the game, fans are hoping nerfs come in a patch soon.