ProChara is a UA-cam content creator that mainly focuses on Splatoon Content. ProChara's content ranges from guides to live streams. ProChara's favourite weapons are the Range Blaster and Stamper.
I remember when he wasn't keen on using the stamper. I think enough people insisted he try it and see if it was good as they claimed or overhyped. Made me happy to know he gave it an honest try - he played it over a month if i remember correctly - instead of writing it off within a week. The painting getting buffed didn't hurt either. Some "competitive" players like to claim certain weapons are "bad" but never put in the time to get a good handle on them. A week is not long enough to really know for sure. Not every weapon is going to feel great, and that's understandable, but don't write it off just because you have difficulty with it. Someone else out there won't. My problem is anything that makes me sluggish or has a painfully slow charge/windup. (Not every roller, charger, splatling, and tri-stringer falls into this but damn it if any of the weakest variants or slowest aren't infuriating to use during salmon run).
In fairness, when I watched chuggaa's splatoon 2 lp, I had no idea who Prochara was. I just knew that he was a guest, really good at splatoon, and been a fan and player since splatoon days. That was it. Competitive typically has tiers to it, and that's what he played in, and I had no idea where he actually stood within the competitive scene. It wasn't but a couple months later that I learned he was only a top player; no big deal or anything.😂
As a newcomer to Splatoon, the community is WAAAAY too disjointed. People gather at creators like Dude, Chara, and even Squid School because it's easier than finding the 1000 Discords people have to sift through to find any info at all. The community is way too decentralized for the average person to know deeper information about it.
i cant stress how much discord itself is hurting accessibility. theres no way to get access to the information posted inside of discord servers without joining yourself, and if you dont get advertised to the right servers its all locked away and untouchable by the majority of the player base. theres no popular twitter account, youtube channel, instagram, tumblr, etc that is outright posting the links to helpful documents, advertising competitions, where to join and look for teams, etc. i want to join the comp scene so bad, but i cant spend hours of my time searching discord servers for *other* discord servers just to find the information i need to start using the discord. i love reading about the strategies for team comps but im not sure how im expected to find this information when no one advertises it elsewhere, even the people competing (although maybe im just missing some big accounts, but it doesn't feel like it since im still in the dark about how to go about making/finding a team and what i do once i find one)
THIS! I still don't understand how this hasn't dawned on whoever's in charge of the discords. So much of the scene is just locked behind them, and Jonny Rando who just wants to make it to X rank isn't going to think of joining the server dedicated to high-level competitive play.
For real!! I hate using random discord servers that I know I'll never use again. Makes me miss online forums because those aren't that popular or even just use any other social media
I think the last reason you list is actually the most salient. I would wager that the vast majority of your audience isn't actually looking to get into the competitive scene. They are looking for easily digestible content that will entertain them and improve their gameplay. They are going to be largely solo queue players looking to climb up in Anarchy or X-rank at best. These people don't have the time and motivation to seek out specific top level players or gameplay footage. They don't have the knowledge to analyze and learn from that footage on their own without breakdowns from more knowledgeable content creators like yourself. I know I fit into that category. I'm an adult with a full time job. I was an adult with a full time job when Splatoon 1 came out. I have other hobbies and can only dedicate so much of my time to this game. If I wanted to truly join the competitive scene I would likely have to give up a lot of the other ways I spend my time, which just isn't a commitment I'm willing to make. So it just doesn't make sense for me to spend time tracking down footage of players who play my weapons. I think the vast majority of people consuming splatoon content online are looking for either lower level learning tools, or for the types of content you watch as an e-sports fan, not an e-sports player. They want to learn about the meta and the players in the type of way fans of IRL sports learn about them for their fantasy leagues. They want to see highlight reels of cool plays or get an understanding of strategies, but not necessarily so they can go out and join a team of their own.
as a pretty big fan of smash bros i absolutely love watching the many, many multi-hour long essay type youtube videos that go into detail on the story's of top level players and tournaments. And i would absolutely love to see some of those for splatoon too
Their upload schedule for it is kind of garbage but Toyoben is doing a interview series with top teams. Recently last resort was interviewed and I hope that translates into other teams getting a spotlight as well.
The large issue that I continue stating ever since Splatoon 2 is that finding event footage is not only hard for competitive players, but e-sports fans and viewers as well, resulting in situation where you can't conveniently follow the thing as a casual observer. It's kinda hard to appreciate the players when most of the time you can't see them in action, lol.
Sometimes, I also feel like competitive players can be a little callous toward the casual scene - many competitive or high-level players I see online, through Twitter or twitch, often regard casuals as ‘filthy’ or ‘stupid’. It also applies to when competitive players have to look at a mode like turf war from a casual perspective: for example, there was a video where Gem (if that’s how you spell his name) was talking about the Big Swig roller, and he was grousing about how people were telling him it’s a painting weapon and it’s more viable in turf war than other ranked modes, and he disregarded them in a way that sounded like he was being haughty. For one, the appeal of the Big Swig is literally to paint - bigger range, minimal consumption when rolling; even the Splatoon devs made nods at how it’s meant to cover turf and such via Sheldon. And two, he didn’t even bother to think about it from how a causal would see it, and didn’t explain ‘it’s not competitively viable’ - instead just saying it’s terrible and everyone who says it has some other purpose is wrong. Another user talks about how competitive turf war is looked down upon by the competitive scene in the West, while in Japan turf war tournaments are viewed highly and get a lot of praise from people who see the ‘beginner mode’ can cater to all skill levels. Maybe I’m looking too deep into it, but I still get the impression that the competitive scene will laugh us all away without taking the time to understand where we are trying to come from. And for the people who want to understand the competitive scene better, asking questions can feel like a dice roll to debate ‘how stupid will they think I am on a scale of 1-10’, or something. That’s just how I feel, of course.
Yeah, why would I want to learn from someone who thinks turf war is the silly baby mode meant for silly casuals? Why would I want to learn from someone who thinks the weapon I like to play means I’m a bad or lazy player who can’t take the time to learn how to aim? Granted, I don’t think I’ve actually seen these competitive players saying things like that, but if I were to find a post or video on twitter or youtube where they talk like that, I’d definitely nope on outta there. I’ll stick with relatively chill content creators 👍
Generally that’s my opinion on the pros of many communities. In miniature modeling I’ve been told by countless pros why my painting isn’t perfect (add thinner, use primer, etc. yet they all tell me it like I’m stupid or that they’re personally insulted by my “casual practices”. I don’t want a masterpiece or something exact to real life. I just want to have a good looking miniature model of something I love. They just can’t respect that opinion. I’ve seen a Similar thing with online gaming communities too. Pros generally aren’t kind to the more casual players who can’t dedicate much to the topic. I’ve had that issue with call of duty, battlefield, Star Wars, war thunder, splatoon, etc. it’s hard to swallow but pros just aren’t cooperative with the casual scene of their respective fandom, and it hurts to think that because they tend to hurt the growth of fandoms in my personal experience.
I want to mention about this, it just being a painting weapon isn't just saying it's only good in turf war. Just painting weapons AREN'T good in turf war. Weapons need to be able to do more than just paint to be good. Due to how unbalanced turf war is, a weapon that paints more isn't better. Even in casual, if a weapon can't survive and fight, it just means you die at important times and your paint output doesnt matter. The problem is that nearly all the tips that top level comp players and players like gem give apply to all ranks and modes, but *some* casual players assume that because they're playing at a different level of play, the tips dont apply to them or they know better than these top players. There's absolutely nothing wrong with playing turf war but the problem comes in when those lower level players try to dispute simple facts about the game and when competitive players with a thousand times the game knowledge they do tell them that they're wrong, they get mad at those players. Everyone could do a better job communicating, I agree, but the people who are in the comment section calling people stupid for asking simple questions aren't "the competitive scene" as you refer to them. They're just people who have mechanical game knowledge and want to make fun of someone worse than them. You get that in every game's community. Any player who cares about the game will answer your question no matter how basic, gem has made a lot of videos on how he will always answer any question asked in good faith with good intentions even if it's literally just "what does the zr button do." I think you're just conflating annoying online trolls with actual top players.
For the first two official Splatfests, I kept running into team Seafoam on the opposing team every other match (before I realized who they were). This was before anyone cared to notice that 'Open' meant teams and 'Pro' meant solo. So for a long while when I kept getting matched against and kept getting crush I finally just took a break which I used to look up who this team was. At the time, very little videos I could find of them but what I did kind of had me in awe that I at least got to see them in action in real time. But mind you, when you're a mid-level casual splatoon player on a team with low-level casual players with no way to communicate/strategize during a Splatfest, the very last thing you really want to see on the other team is 'SF' before names.
Bro I ran into Kyo and B Marvs doing duos in Tricolor, that was not a fun match since they used .96 gal (no hate to that weapon you never know if your shots will land with it) and Sloshing Machine (the way better two shot kill weapon) and were spawn camping us attackers since we were both vastly outraged using the Splattershot (bad weapon matchup and map design). But from playing against other players I can tell are clearly better than me like in Anarchy and X battles, I do like seeing how they play in the replays and see how they won or lost that game.
@JustJames007 I don't think there is much if any balancing of teams going on for Tricolor battles. Which I guess fits the theme of chaos, plus locating 4 different teams to shove together is probably asking too much since you can't play normal Turf War for 3 games straight without there being a communication error. That aside, you definitely run into a strange mix of pros, sweaty high levels, mid level casuals, and low level kids in Tricolor. As cool as it is to see the pros on occasion in your own matches, I want them as far as possible from me during Splatfests.
Before watching the video, I just want to chip in, the way how the Splatoon community functions is very akin to that of an indie game community (in terms of functional size). The vast majority of the millions of players are children most of whom don’t even know how to use the internet properly. The amount of young adults well-versed in communicating with others in a genuine fashion numbers in the few hundred thousands which, don’t get me wrong is still a large number, just a hard cry from the amount of people in the actual player base. Not to mention that there is some content made by Splatoon creators that are infamous for being bad, which turns a lot of people who would like Splatoon away from the community and the game by proxy (I won’t name names, I’m just saying).
That last thing you said, about creators who are bad in their main Video game turning people away is pretty harsh. I don’t know who you’re talking about and what context there is but I don’t see how in general someone might be disinterested from a community because they watched someone bad, wich I believe can have the opposite effect.
I guess it's just because western audiences like blood and guts more than Japan. I mean, a game doesn't have to have blood and guts to become a massive success (look at Minecraft), but Splatoon is now seen as that one game to shush your kids when they are being hyperactive. The community is a mixed bag as well, with most of the people in it basically being children who will go wild if you say one wrong thing about their game. Even Minecraft appeals to the adults with redstone and command blocks. If we really wanted to bring this discussion further, we need to understand how a game becomes popular.
This is a great point and a problem that Pokémon faces, though not as much. I think if nintendo were willing to hold more tournaments or even build some kind of circuit system like Pokémon has, it could bring more people into the competitive scene
I think there are four incredibly important things going on: Team Game: Since any result in a Splatoon match is the providence of an entire team, individuals on that team are less recognizable. Also, weapons in this game, as different as they are, have way more similarities than characters in a fighting game, especially with how much the meta loves short range shooters rn. (As an aside, the incredibly stale Crab meta makes it harder to find top players playing the weapons that viewers actually want to see.) That, combined with the sheer number of options, make it hard to assign any one weapon choice with the same level of importance as a fighting game character. That's not even to mention people swapping their main weapons every time a new patch hits. Small, exclusive scene: You mentioned a lot of good points about this, but there are a couple more elements to this. Because Splatoon is a team game, it is necessarily much more difficult to play in a more casual venue, such as friendlies at a Smash event. This leads to any place that could facilitate these kinds of interaction having necessarily higher bars to entry, as you need to get 8 people together for a game of Splatoon to happen. Also, the mere fact that so much of this game's community lives on Discord makes it necessarily difficult to reach out beyond that walled garden. State of the game: Some constraints are endemic to how we watch this game and how we talk about it. The camera in any tournament vod is constantly hopping from player to player. This isn't how Smash works. If you are watching a set in Melee, you are watching everything the two players are doing. Most of the time, any individual on a Splatoon team is getting their perspective shown for less than a minute total, over several smaller cuts. Also, when I watch tournament sets, it feels like a lot of casters spend more time popping off then they do explaining. That's all well and good when what's happening on the screen is obvious, but I've found myself several times wondering if I was missing something with how people were reacting that made it an awkward experience. The scene you have, and the scene you get: When you describe that players have to be willing to go out and find new people to watch, that seems incomplete to me. There won't be a scene that seeks out top players to watch without those top players having more of a presence first. You mentioned some good ideas to fix this, but here's a couple more I thought of: - Cameras. Easier to connect with a player if I can see them - Individual perspectives. Please. - Focus on the players. As you mentioned, it seems like a lot of the best known players are the people making content about it. Maybe focusing content of those creators on individual players could help with the discovery problem. - Spectacle. There just isn't the same kind of personality, bombast, and spectacle surrounding the Splatoon community as there is around other communities. It's a bedrock difference, and I don't really know what to do about it. That will have to come from within the top levels of the game.
I think the biggest difference between Splatoon and Smash is simply the lack of local tournament scenes. It's so much easier to ask a better player for advice when you're literally sitting next to them. You can see whether or not they're busy or in the mood to answer questions. Sending a DM online often feels like you're inconveniencing someone by asking for their time. Unfortunately, the team game format makes small, local tournaments not really feasible in the way it is for 1-on-1 games.
I think it is a three part problem. First is that the scene is smaller and second is that that footage is harder to find both of which you mentioned in the video. Something you didn't mention with regards to the second problem is how much harder it is to find VOD's in game due to how Splatoon handles replays and how that affects how hard it is to find footage even on youtube. I play fighting games and in a lot of those I can just search for replays of matches played in ranked in game and find two top players playing against each other. This is probably also why it is so easy to find videos of top players playing for the games I play, people go online and post those matches on youtube without the players having to do so. The last problem is moreso a problem inherent to Splatoon and team games in general, players are associated more with teams rather than themselves. People are more likely to know that Sayonara had a member who used a Ttek during Nintendo Cup than they are to know which of Sayonara's players used the Ttek.
I agree, finding the footage at times is quite the challenge. Another issue I see within the Splatoon community are the smaller creators who main X weapon and don't get to be seen much due to the lack of numbers at times. Even though I'm a lower level H3/96/Brella player I want to push these weapons in X rank to become higher level. Another issue I have as a creator is I don't have the big enough following yet to say I can do what I love of playing Splatoon and make something out of it then justify grinding X amount of hours almost every day, edit the videos, and upload. I still do but I upload every couple of days and slowly make the videos better.
One more problem. Nobody wants to watch 4 hours stright of splatoon on stream. It's why soccer matches are played for an hour there is a gap for several hours, another match wait till next weekend 2 more matches. You will find it difficult to keep people's attention for a longer time rather than a shorter time. So if possible I think online tournaments especially should be an hour at most in one day and span several days.
PikaDave is sick. He's on cherry limeade and he's posted that awesome match with the perfect tristrikes you did a video on but from his perspective with comms and everything (He also threw the strikes) I also watch arashi stuff since I main wiper and I love ultra stamp :)
I've found Arashi to be quite helpful while learning Wiper. Splatana's have such a high skill ceiling and I'm always looking for more places to learn it from.
I think another thing is that casters and commentators don't always know the names of everyone in the match, and there's not always player cams so it's harder to remember those players.
This guy ProChara is so underrated, he’s this content creator than makes videos about the game from a competitive standpoint. Most people haven’t heard of him and you should check him out, he’s really cool
I think my main problem I’ve had when I’ve tried looking for gameplay for my weapons is that it’s hard to find specific match ups for your weapons especially when there’s a lot of weapons that aren’t as commonly played at top level. Like if I wanted to learn how to play against a blaster player as a tri slosher player I not only have to find a vod with the tri slosher player but also find one where that player goes up against a blaster player. On top of that maps greatly change the effectiveness of weapons meaning I may not even learn as much about positioning or other map related specifics for my weapons since pros don’t play on a lot of the maps/game modes. Another big thing is that top level players often are playing with and against a coordinated team. There’s definitely stuff to learn from that but there’s also a lot of stuff I just simply can’t put into practice in x rank. So often times since content creators upload x rank gameplay they have way more useful footage and insights about how to play their weapons even if they’re not the best in their category because I’m actually able to put the stuff into practice.
thank fucking god for this video. i have a huge issue of not knowing who to watch other than squid school and occasional streams for tourneys. i feel like we definitely need a major spreadsheet of all the high level players that are divX, and what weapons they play.
I get a few comments on my channel here and there saying they came to my channel because of a squid school video. I'm 90% sure its this one , so thank you ❤ I loved your section on what top level players can do and what they're doing wrong. That's such a hard topic to give justice to, and yet, you did I'll do justice to the Carbon Roller players 👊
the reason why, honestly, is how different pro smash looks, compared to what most people can do, vs how different pro-splatoon looks, vs what people can do. pro-smash, looks fundamentally different, with it's speed, combos, and sometimes ridiculous gameplay. it's fundamentally different to what casual looks like, and anyone with an even passing interest in getting better will latch onto different players. like, even if you don't understand the nuances of neutral, or the depth of play, it looks fundamentally different. pro splatoon? I'll be honest, most of the time, it looks *very similar*, and if you don't understand coordinated set play, all you really see is the players being good, but good in a way that looks very similar to lower levels of play. you can think "if I just get good aim, and quick reflexes, I'd be like them", which is wrong, but it's the sort of casual wrong that means Splatoon doesn't entice you to "latch onto" a variety of players. I'd have a hard time spotting a top player in going solo in most lobbies, and I'd have a hard time describing even a top team playing against me. put me against any number of smash players though, from low level competitive through to top, and if I survive long enough to play for more than 20-30 seconds a stock, and I could probably rattle off any number of things, because Smash presents itself so much better than shooters do. I can know what my opponent is doing that much more, and thus I'm in a better position to recognise good play when it's being used against me.
The funny thing is outside of stamper and wiper gameplay all chara does (content wise before you twitter users come with pitchforks) is tier lists lmao
its so true, i joined the comp scene just recently and i dont get in touch with the highest level, i recently wanted to improve at the stamper and wanted a top level coach i dont have to pay money to cause i am broke, but i didnt know who is up there. When i was in the ultimate scene I got pretty quickly into the top players i should know.
@@kunuto8807 sorry I meant don't have to pay instead of don't have to coach. But even very good ones aren't probably going to work for charity its like asking a random artist on the internet to draw something for you without paying them
@@kunuto8807 as an artist no. Other bigger artists don't tend to help out smaller artists personally for free. Because there are so many people who want help why would you be the expection. You need to pay people for their work. Artists only really help out other people using UA-cam which isn't very helpful for figuring out personal issues.
My pushback is that for me personally, I’m not trying to become a super good competitive player. I don’t have the time or energy to spend to get super good, so I play for fun. I agree that for people serious about Splatoon it’s important to watch high level play and analyze it, but for me I’m comfortable sitting at S rank. I also prefer Salmon Run so I often check Hazmy’s posts about the current rotation and tips for those, but that’s about it. All the people I play with are casual and mostly less skilled than me, so getting better doesn’t have much draw for me.
Absolutely. Agreed ten-fold here. Competitive just does not have 'The Draw' that it does in other Competitive Scenes. No reason to get honestly really awesome unless you wanna just crush everyone all the time. ...and doing that isn't fun anyways. The game is geared towards 'have fun' so Competitive is going to Flounder a lot more.
@@SilverFennX Additionally, we already know the top team is pretty much unbeatable currently. Who wants to shoot for #2? And, even with Salmon Run, if you 999 every map, what's left? This game is kind of a conundrum.
if you like Salmon Run, I definitvely recommend Brian (@Brianthedrummer) and Latteboi ! Brian often has the comms between him and his teammates so it's very insightful to hear what they say to each other and helps me understand timing better, and Latteboi is just the gameplay, very relaxing to watch.
Dude, I tried, I tried so hard to find ANYONE that was top-tier playing my main, and they simply do not exist. There are dozens and dozens of top Splash players, nobody in competitive is playing Squelcher Dualies, I have NO pro references, not even Chase247 is a good reference from me because he is on the record MULTIPLE TIMES saying he hates the Squelcher Dualies. So if I want to learn a weapon, with the crazy stupid meta we're in, my choices appear to be switch to Splash or quit. I have spent HOURS looking for footage of Squelcher Dualies footage for people playing even in low-level tournaments and it simply does not exist. I've poured over Sendou looking for any team with a Squelcher Dualie, and the ones that do list Squelcher Dualie have swapped it for Splash because it's objectively better due to Crab Rave. You know how many videos are listed for Squelcher Dualie on Sendou? EIGHT. By comparison, Splash has around 70 entries on Sendou for videos. For me, this is a meta problem first and foremost. I either play the game in a way I don't have any desire to play it, being a slave to the crab rave, or I leave. Take a guess which I've chosen at this point.
Gem, it isn't OUR fault that no one knows who comp players are when NONE OF THEM put themselves out there! Chara has talked about this MULTIPLE TIMES on both of his UA-cam channels! These people don't make any content or post any of their matches with commentary and it's limiting their ability to brand themselves. I know not everyone has time to play the game religiously and do content at the same time, but a ton of these guys DON'T EVEN TRY to post anything! Chara has yelled at Biscuit and Bagel for not making more videos and I agree with him! They are both incredible players who know their weapons better than anyone else but they won't share that knowledge with anyone in a meaningful way! And yes actually I CAN name a few comp players (idk if they still play competitive or not) AngleBagel (who I got all my Nautilus tips from and is the sole reason I can play the weapon competently) Biscuit (another amazing naut player), Kiver, Kyo, Arashi, DUDE (obviously) Chase247, and Brian (I think he mains chargers) MHFsilver, and ShockWavee (another incredible Nautilus player). But despite knowing who some of these people are, I only know them from Splatoon 2 and not Splatoon 3. The new people who represent the competitive scene don't do anything except stay in their little discord bubbles and refuse to branch outward to reach a wider audience. I would LOVE to follow some of these players but I don't use Twitter all that much because it's a horrible trash website and I don't like Discord because the UI confuses me. If they made tictoks or UA-cam shorts or UA-cam videos making guides or commentaries on their matches I would watch the shit out of that! BUT THEY DON'T DO THAT! HOW IS THAT MY FAULT!? Edit: I'm glad you touched on this in your video.
You mentioned good reasons for why it's hard for new viewers to learn about players, but I think a big part of this is the in game UI doesnt do a great job of helping someone unfamiliar keep track of which players are playing which weapon for which team. The caster might say x player was splatted and if it's not the exact interaction shown on screen I often don't know what weapon that player is playing (if by the time I look up at the HUD there are multiple splatted players) and sometimes I'm not even sure what team they're on. Learning who plays what and for whom has been a slow process as someone who just started paying attention to competitive Splatoon. I'd point to something like overwatch's spectating UI as one that does a great job of having static information to consistently refer back to, to help learn the game and players(the player names being displayed underneath the character portraits especially). I know it would be extremely difficult for production to do that with Splatoon's spectating feature but I think it's a shortcoming that could hopefully be addressed in other ways.
I feel like it partially is also because not a lot of people at that high level (or even just people that are seen as ‘good’ or ‘knowledge’ make content, or that there isn’t an effective way to find this content if it does exist. People think Chara a lot because Chara makes a ton of content, same with Dude, same with Kiver, same with you. Also it doesn’t help that a lot of the top level is in Japan, so there’s a language barrier there. People just don’t know who is too level because we don’t see them outside of specific tournaments, and people don’t talk about them a lot. I only know of half the people I know because of random Twitter algorithm. And even then, I don’t *know* them. I think that people need to make more content about high level, need to advertise it better, and need to categorise or even just label it better. Tournament organisers could be a massive help in this. I feel like tournament vods are pretty unwieldy at times, nobody’s gonna sit through a 4 hour vod that probably won’t even show what they need. Well, nobody outside of people who are obviously dedicated enough to try and find other, more efficient uses of their time. Timestamps of matches would be good, something like: “Winner’s Final Set 1 - Starburst vs FTWin”, with the teams’ rosters and sendouink links in the description could go a long way. Also I would love to see more interviews of players, putting a name and a face and an actual *person* behind a player goes a long way. Sorry if this seems incoherent, I am currently writing this in class and only half focussed lmao
I think you've got great points here. Aligns fully with what should happen with Competitive and even makes it easier to process. Knowing names and faces, even if its just Splatoon Character Faces can be absolutely important towards connecting a player to their likeness. Also, consistency. I have seen that its more likely that a Pro or Comp player changes their gear around *constantly* instead of keeping a favorite set for most uses. Why? The game is significantly more geared towards being 'Fresh' and fancier by allowing to change abilities even on the MAIN ability of gear. I don't get this, we need more people to settle on 'this is what I use' rather than have a Man 'O Wardrobe in their own back pocket... xD
i feel like a lot of top splatoon players have similar names for example, luna or storm are rlly popular names that are relatively popular at top level edit: this isnt a bad thing, it just could be a little confusing for people who are new to the comp scene
@@TorchesUponStars I doubt all the Lunas are on the same team and play the same weapon. Most players have team tags in their in game names as well and if there is a need people can differentiate them by their game IDs! It’s only a problem if make it one. Splatoon is not the only game in the world where there are common tags.
11:34 It's so true. I love watching Chase, but I'd like to see more. It's tough only being able to pick out a couple words from a Mashu or Kanzaki Ayame stream for tetras haha. It's torture to know just enough Japanese to see that those players are making videos dedicated to giving really detailed and specific advice for the weapon, but not knowing nearly enough Japanese to actually understand what they're saying. The knowledge seems to always be just out of reach.
This video is very convenient because I’m someone who got into the more comp side of splatoon recently, so hearing about sendou’s video sort feature is a god send.
I don't style myself as a someone who wants to be a comp player, I'm more like someone who plays hockey casually but sometimes watches clips. But, this is cool, and I do generally want to improve. My favorite splashtag title is "Self-Taught Heavy Splatling User" because most of my strategy that I know is more about what I've learned myself, but learning from more top level heavies might help me get better. And I want to! But that's its own thing, I suppose.
Banger video. Inspiring me to make more content so I can be the next Ttek up the ladder! I think the scene just generally lacks a maturity and the perspective that comes with it. I’m not talking about children playing the game casually, but about most of the higher level players who do skew older. Too many don’t seem to care that having a different name in game, on discord, and on Twitter could be a problem. A major problem right now is most tournaments get about as many viewers as they do participants. If we want to be a real esport, we need spectators. We need fans. How can anyone be a fan of you if they can’t even connect the dots on who you are tournament to tournament? Or they have no idea when you’ll play again? Imagine if NFL teams changed names and players constantly and you didn’t know if the team you liked was playing on Sunday or not? Top players are competitors at heart and I can sympathize that they’ve focused on little else other than getting as good at the game as possible. But I think at this stage, growing the scene and getting people to care more is more important than winning tournaments no one is watching.
I got my fiancé (ex LOL player, will be important later) into splatoon recently, we were watching the vod review from PAX. We get a game in and he goes, "so, who's the Faker in splatoon? The famous one that will be used in every ad in existance for the competitve scene?" I just sat there a moment before going, "we don't really have that" This video had some good timing! I definitely think we're lacking in top tier gameplay. Where am I supposed to find Explosher tips?
After watching this, I immediately got recommended a video of a smash tournament with the player names and characters in the title. Guess UA-cam knows how to prove a point
i think the main problem is that most people want to be better, but don't strive for the top. a lot of people just want some small tips to improve, but have other obligations or things that they want to do more. a lot of the things you talk about here might help getting people into being serious about improving, not just searching for little tips to help win in A rank. one of the problems i find myself having is that, even if there are tournament vods, it can be hard to watch it and break down why players do what they do. not to mention that the perspective shifts around a lot, which makes it much harder to watch if you're looking for a specific weapon. if we had more videos of players pausing the replays, talking about their own perspective, what they were doing, and why they did it, it might push people to actually invest time into learning more. also, if you play a more niche weapon, it makes it much harder. i've watched a bunch of your videos with devvy in them, since i main hydra, but i can't imagine how people who play weapons like brella right now. even then, a lot of that content ends up focusing more on backlines as a whole, which makes me wish she had more content more into specifics on her own channel. having top players who specialize in the weapon actually put out content for it would help immensely.
I don't know how to watch or keep track of any players. Every time I try to search for them I rarely get results. I'll happily watch matches and follow people who play my weapons, if I could just find those replays.
Great video on the subject! I think about this a lot, and while I mostly agree, I'd like to add a bit more thoughts of my own into this. I think more top players should be making content. And that can be anything from clips, highlights, or even vod dumps. Preferably content with an idea would be better, but I understand not everyone has the time or even wants to do that, so recording a session would be more than enough to help others. As far as teams and teammates getting more recognition, the interviews is a great start, but we should really approach this with a marketing lens. Competitive Splatoon just doesn't enter the conversation with anyone outside of the community. We're not really known for much, and ironically meme pages on twitter do a better job at marketing competitive ideas than comp players. I get it, they just want to play the game and have fun with nothing to worry about beyond that, but theirs a burden of accountability on us for the outcome. Memes and "inside jokes" really go a long way. Just like Smash has "destruction" and Tetris has "Boom, Tetris for Jonas." These are things that slowly get us into the general competitive zeitgeist. Some styles of content that would greatly supplement the scene would be turndowforwalt style documentaries on tournaments, or the rise of a certain player no one has heard of. A good story will always be more compelling than just pumping out content only to question why the work isn't resonating. Videos like this would get the attention of non Splatoon players too. Another great idea I think would be showcasing the top 10 players of a season. (genuinely surprised JP doesn't do this already) That would do wonders for up and coming players, and can be just what someone needs to get the recognition they deserve for their skill. For me personally, the competitive community takes a massive hit when it comes to how we discuss things. The discourse is polluted with the binary line of thinking of a weapon either being meta or trash. How does this push the conversation forward? And how am I expected to participate in this dialogue when most content creators refuse to address that issue? I main Dapples. I've been a Dapples one trick for years. As you mentioned in the video, it's a bit irritating to see a content creator who doesn't know much about a weapon play it and come to a concrete conclusion on it, only to never touch it again. This does more harm than good. I'm not under the illusion that Dapples is better than Splash, just that it can do so much with the cards it's been dealt. At the very least a lot more than people realize. I hope to make an in depth guide on the weapon in the future. That might be my only contribution to the competitive side of the community. Another thing to ask ourselves is what got us into competitive Splatoon in the first place? For me it was ranking up in Solo. I know many others relate to this as well. So what can we do with that information? We can capitalize on solo content as the gateway into the comp scene. Videos like "how this tournament made me top 500" would be the kinds of ideas that get people more interested in the scene. Let's be real, solo will always get more views over scrims/ tournaments, partially because the weapon variety. Also, how does a players skills translate into an environment where you can't communicate? It's a much more interesting scenario by design. A tournament with triple splash can not compete with one splash and 3 low tiers somehow making it work from an entertainment stand point. This doesn't mean we sacrifice tournaments by working around these parameters, but more so an opportunity to explore how we can integrate these elements into what we have already. This was just a dump of ideas and thoughts more than anything else. I would love to work with anyone as far as content to get the word out for tournaments, scrims, or top players in general if anyone is up for it. I would love to have that conversation with anyone that wants to make content. The Splatoon community means so much to me, and I want to help in any way that I can. While I don't have the most free time these days, it would still be cool to work alongside this area of creators. Thank you Squid School for opening the dialogue up and encouraging others input. Your channels a real Gem ;)
I’m really into saxophone and this reminds me of how literally every time I talk to someone at my school who plays saxophone, even ones who play seriously and want to major in it, have no idea who Charlie Parker is. The greatest saxophone player of all time. They know Kenny G! But not Sonny Rollins or John Coltrane. And the ONLY reason they know Kenny G is because of relatives or memes or something, not because they’ve actually listened. It’s sad to me because like I know probably 50 or so famous saxophone players and and can name their top songs and what they sound like, heck I can even name some of their set ups. I can argue why I like one better than the other. So it’s just like a culture shock to know that these saxophone friends I have who play say, 3 hours a day like me, have no idea ANY of it. But they do know content creators like BetterSax and Scott Paddock. So I guess it’s my job to teach them.
I never knew about that sendou feature, that's pretty cool! Thankfully as someone who plays splash, I can go to almost any set and find top level gameplay.
I mean, can you really blame low level players/mid level players? Nobody wants to watch the same 5 to 6 weapons being played every match. like, if I wasn't good at splatoon, who am I supposed to watch for splat roller? SPLAT ROLLER? Watching top level players is good for you, you can see what higher level players are doing, and learn from them, but not unless you're planning on using the meta, or whatever other weapon they happen to enjoy using at that time. I think there's a grand canyon sized gap between top level and mid level players/solo players that we refuse to acknowledge. Most competitive content creators, such as prochara (to provide a good example since they've been gaining more popularity), or any top level competitors, shouldn't be treated as gospel up to a certain point. Starting with content creators, now I'm not going to say I know better than them, but thats also not to say they know better than you or me. Its a good idea for players to seek out more information from more experienced players, but its not a blanket source for everything you want/need. In fact, the majority of prochara's tips are mostly focused on coordinated environments, which the majority of the player base has little to no access to. For example, the recent quick respawn video Prochara made had a disclaimer in it that literally stated that the strategy showcased in said video wasn't going to be very good in solo. Another example is that while prochara is very experienced, they're not experienced in every single weapon in the entire game. They can provide good basics for the majority of them, but that does not mean they know best. For example, Prochara has made plenty of balance change idea videos in the past, and in one of them, they wanted to increase the damage that roller's rolling did. Now as a splat roller main myself, I know for a 100% guaranteed fact that rolling with a roller is completely and utterly useless in 99.99% of situations. It would be a buff sure, but that doesn't fix the main issue that rolling has, and thats basically walking face first into bullets. We really should acknowledge the fact that just because they are good at the game and make content, does not mean you should be getting 100% of your information from just that one source. Which is the start of my next point, that not everyone uses every single weapon in the entire game, so you can't just watch one person for tips on your weapon. You can get the basics from them sure, but only if you're a low level player, most basic tips you probably already know by mid to higher levels. There's also less popular weapons you can't find anyone for tips, such as weapons nobody uses such as splat roller, dapple dualies, or L-3 for example. These weapons are currently very weak, so most people don't use them at all. Which segways into my next point, top level players. You're completely out of luck with trying to learn from them, especially for those weaker weapons. You're only really going to find anything on, at the very least, viable weapons. Say I had absolutely zero interest in ever using any of the current meta weapons, I only ever want to use Splat roller for the rest of eternity, I'm just never going to find top level players using splat roller for tips unless they buff splat roller into the meta. Which just makes watching top level players almost completely useless for myself. My main point I'm trying to get across is this: there is a MASSIVE gap between solo players & mid/low level players and coordinated team players & top level players. A perfect example is the Tenta missiles argument, these two groups are playing WILDLY different games! Shell, even just what WEAPON you're using makes the game entirely different! We should be trying to bridge this gap as a community, at least as best we can. Because not everything is in a vacuum, we don't all experience the same game, each group has their own little world, so not every single peice of advice you can give to solo/low mid players actually works.
One of the big things I noticed since coming over from smash was frankly the lack of vods in general. It's a lot harder to get a recording setup working with Splatoon than say, Melee, where if you're desperate enough you can just use Dolphin and OBS. That's actually no small part of why I've attempted in the past to get my own recording setup working-I say attempted because I failed, but that's a whole different can of worms,- Sendou's video section is a great step forwards in what I've seen, but at present it still feels like TOs are very often going without vods, which in an online game like this? They should feel more willing to try and reach out to content creators, see if they can get them as a stream host or something. If the scene is already taking so many cues from Smash, why not having players commentate so that we can get a few more vods?
One of my favourite top players is Latias who've I've been watching every now and then since Splatoon 2. She's an Aussie which made me feel proud that my country had some representation in the competitive scene and she's the reason I decided to main chargers in Splatoon 2 and still do to this day.
Since not a ton of people have the time to go out of their way to search for top-level players who play their weapon (and sift through them to find which ones are _really_ the best instead of settling for someone like Chase247), could you possibly make a video listing best player(s) for as many weapons as you can...?
i think a documentary similar to the popular one from the melee community would really help people learn about top level players and connect with their stories in a more entertaining way than interviews in between sets. watching that doc made me really excited to learn more about smash, and i think splatoon would really benefit from meeting the best players and learning about competitive history.
What I’ve done is find the Japanese word for my weapon and search it up on youtube. It might not be the best but I found a good dualie squelchers main called Suryu and I’ve been improving from him.
i've been competitive for over 3 years and even i struggle to know of top level players and teams sometimes. part of that is just that i dont watch enough tourney play, and honestly that's just a personal failing. but i think so much of the scene is personal on twitter rather than in the tourneys and vids, and it feels almost insular sometimes even when i'm already fairly deep in the community.
I have always known of ProChara as “that one insufferable Splatoon player who’s insanely good at the game, but also teaches you how to be insanely good, in a way that you can understand without getting lost in the details” To me, you and him are the only ones who can get through my 7ft thick skull 😂
@@busofselfdoubt maybe not insufferable per say, but abit on the intense side, that might be why you end up learning from him even if you don’t want to. Every time I watch his videos I always have something new to apply, like with Gem.
A key thing to note is how involved the competitive side of the game is with the game itself. Counter Strike (Mainly GO, but also 2 by extension) features competitive news on it's library page as well as in game. Meanwhile, Splatoon, I actually can't even remember whenever they've announced the winners in even a Nintendo Online News Post. I'm not saying CS is the same thing either given how weapon picks function there, of course. But I can't readily say it's easy for someone like me to keep up with competitive news since for the most part I have to actively search for it.
this was a really good video in showing the gaps between the community and the competitive scene. my first ever experience watching a competitive game was the Splatoon 3 Splatsville Showdown tournament and i had SO much fun talking about it on the squid school server while it was going on! while i'm pretty much just a casual fan, i would love to watch competitive splatoon and see what goes down on that side of the community, so i hope going forward some of these things like interviews and easier access to VODs become a thing. i would seriously love to watch some cool splatoon matches go down :]
I also feel like the top players in splatoon are incredibly inaccessible to people outside of their bubble without paying for a metafy lesson. Because our top-level scene is so small, it feels incredibly exclusive, especially given all of the recent coverage of PAX. It's awesome that our community is so tight knit but it's also hard to break past people in your relative division and meet people higher than you. To put it simply, in my experience, people aren't interested in scrimming or even associating with players beneath them without a reason ($$$) to. For example, as a bucket user, I would LOVE to get to know Kyo! But how would I go about doing that? Would sliding into his DMs be appropriate, as a div 11 player who just joined a team 2 months ago? Why would he give me his time of day when he's busy 1. living his life outside of squid game and 2. being a top level player? Not sure if he even has the time / energy to respond to a random DM asking for advice. The closest I can probably get to Kyo! would be through his AMAs, but that's about it. There's an inherent barrier that exists between people online, which only increases tenfold when there's prestige and infamy attached to one of the people. Also, if we were to contrast Splatoon to professional sports (I am a basketball girlie), people often know individual players waaay before they understand a team, and it's all got to do with promotion and highlights. As you mentioned, the current state of VODs is incredibly inaccessible to people -- you and Chara help by handpicking matches and uploading them individually onto UA-cam. But even then, we don't focus on individual players, we focus on team strategy and synergy. It's hard for people to know about individuals when we literally don't focus on it. If we want to get individuals to be known in the scene, then we NEED to be able to put top-level players out there. Splatoon content creators are incredibly visible and honestly I'm not sure whether other top players WANT to be as visible as y'all. There's really no incentive for them to be known (unless there was money in it).
I make it a habit to remember the name of the team because I don’t have the best memory and remembering hundreds of individual players would put me in a coma. I could tell you what comp a team runs (usually) but cannot tell you the players. Also so I don’t make the fallacy of thinking that popularity = skill and that all the best players are content creators. Instead of thinking of Prochara it would be better to think of Last Resort. This is a TEAM game after all. Individual skill is important as brought up in the video, people need more learning resources. But following a team and finding out that one of the players plays a weapon you like then following them to learn more is the way I go about it.
11:11 I love the last resort stream vods chara has been putting out of them just playing anarchy or salmon run or whatever, they are so funny together and I want more of them :)
English-language Splatoon creators always ignore the most popular mode for the wider casual playerbase - Turf War. Instead, they whine about it & think it's beneath them. Japanese content creators don't make that mistake & are rewarded for it with views. Even on this Squid School channel, its 2nd most popular video EVER is Turf War related. Not only that, English-language creators always deride competitive Turf War. Like how this channel put out a "Can Turf War Be Played Competitively?" debate video a month ago. On the other hand, a competitive Japanese Turf War tournament with elementary school students can get 10-20x the viewership of the biggest English-language tournament. Sometimes, looking at things from a different perspective is helpful.
I get the same impression sometimes from the top-level community regarding solo queue. There's just this general air of it being regarded as a "lesser" mode.
The goal should be taking those turfwar views and exposing them to other modes. If none of the people who watch turf war content watch any of the other modes, you’re not actually gaining anything because those fans don’t share your values and don’t care about the wider community. It’s a potential gateway, but chasing views does not build a scene.
@@ccznen As someone steadily trying to improve in solo queue before putting myself out there to join a team, I feel so alienated when most of the resources for learning to play better are all from a team standpoint. I get that Splatoon is a team game, and that at the competitive level teamwork and team strategy means more than individual skill, but it's a chicken or egg scenario. And because I'm too shy to look up random scrims on discord servers, I'm stuck in this hell until I manage to get over the anxiety.
Turf War is popular because it's the bread and butter of this game. It's the only gameplay shown off in marketing and promotional material. While yes, it has a wide reach it's not the same as getting that reach on a competitive scrim or a high-level ranked mode. While you can get the attention of a casual audience like that many of them will exclusively watch and play turf war and not go anywhere else. In addition, to your point about the JP school kids, Japan's splatoon scene is as big as, if not bigger than the entire rest of the world combined, so it's naturally going to experience more views. If you look at a top western player's content and find a JP player of similar skill, the Japanese one will generally have more views. I do think there is a stigma against turf war, but I'd argue that it's warranted because the other four modes offer more complexity and are inherently more conducive to competition than turf war. Turf doesn't test attributes like special coordination, positioning, objective awareness, mechanical ability, etc. as well as the other modes. Each of the four "real" modes rewards a different kind of playstyle that allows for a plethora of weapons to shine. RM for example likes high DPS and high-mobility/the ability to rotate from defense to offense and back quickly for example which allows otherwise overlooked weapons to come up like the Sploosh 7 from the last game. In Turf War, the only playstyles are "I paint and stay alive" and "I paint and stay alive".
@@MegaSpark24 turf war may be the forefront for marketing material, but it’s still a game mode at the end of the day. Think of it like Mario Kart - it’s extremely simple on the outside and easy for anyone to get into, but when it gets intense, it gets INTENSE. Playing turf war doesn’t inherently give someone a weaker mindset competitively: it’s a different mode with different goals and different strategies. It may be more simple on the outside but i believe that top level play for turf war is a real thing that can be achieved and enjoyed.
I highly recommend listening to the Popcast for anyone trying to familiarize themself with competitive play. It's run by popgun, who Gem name dropped a couple times here. It's a weekly podcast basically just talking about what happened in comp that week, and it's been super helpful for me to hear what names come up frequently
I missed the original question but my 3 would be Naegora (3900xp heavy) Kelp, high level heavy, and magiace, hydra youtuber. There is a resource you can use to find top Japanese players, though many don’t play anymore. I think it’s good to look at top teams and tournaments and try to find whoever plays or even flexes to your weapon.
Just putting my 2 cents here but ever since Splatoon 2. I’ve told friends who play somewhat competitively that Splatoon doesn’t have a place that’s easily accessible for anyone to see. An example I can give is how Smash had GR Smash, if you look at their content they can have over a million views on their Top 10 moments. With how people struggle to get into content because of how stuff like UA-cam Shorts or TikTok works, watching full VODs is not only difficult but just boring to some. Having a highlight reel of the best moments from tournaments and specific weapons would be a good idea for an introduction to these teams and these tournaments. From what I can tell at least no one’s really doing this for splatoon, and it might be a great idea to do this just to introduce people. It might get people sharing those clips and showing it more to casual people. Although I’m not sure how people feel about their plays being in some “random” UA-cam channel, but it might be something that needs to be dealt with for the time being until it gets more and more traction. But this is just food for thought, nothing really serious of a suggestion.
Hey, I least know who DNAZeke is and who DNA are... because he kicked my fucking head in. I faced DNA Zeke and 4 other top 500 emblem players in X Battles when my power was 19XX... for no justifiable reason. I remember that game vividly, because I never should have been in it. It never should have happened.
Definitely a range of good points covered. I think your point on forming Melee connections is interesting, as it highlights another element of Splatoon that makes it more difficult to find top players: it's an online game where you can fight other players from your couch without needing to know those people, and uses skill-based matching (to varied degrees). This is almost the opposite of Melee (where you needed to hear about the tourneys somehow, as limited internet back then). And this more organic meeting also allows low-level and high-level players to meet (whether through one approaching the other or having a friend introduce the two of you). Splatoon doesn't need that, beyond arguably the tournament scene (which even then may vary).
this is a great video and i hope it genuinely encourages top level players to put themselves out there more, not only will it help players looking into the competitive scene but it will help the community grow as a whole and get more attention on splatoon.
Another idea for high level to low level contact and improvement would be to take inspiration from GothamChess (weird comparison, I know) with his series titled "How to Lose at Chess", in which he takes games submitted by members of his community and analyses them, then makes a video explaining all the ways the viewer messed up and what they could improve on. I feel as if there's untapped potential for something similar in Splatoon.
I think part of the disconnect between mid to low level teams and top teams is that there’s not a lot of opportunity to self expression at top level right now. Where in melee or ultimate you can pretty easily identify how different players have different styles and archetypes that are exciting to see go against each other and guess which style will win. At top level you can only really identify a team based on minor deviations from the meta in their weapon comp. I know Robbe and tomadachi because one player sometimes plays ink brush once in a while, I know last resort because of a cool double splatana comp that other teams don’t have. The issue is is that those deviations haven’t led them to a lot of success until new meta, so it just feels like deviating from the meta is just suboptimal right now and it’s not as rewarding to look for subtle differences in strategy.
this. Very much what you've said here is what is currently WRONG with all the Comp scene lately. Not enough for people to look at the wall of names and go 'oh hey, I know them' without personally knowing the person to a high degree. What is lost is just how easily everyone 'blends in' because of current Meta. Individuality is lost because while it is a Team Game, the Meta makes it even harder to break free and become recognizable.
This attitude of "high level meta play is samey and boring" is part of the problem too. If you're seeing similar strategies win tournament matches, why aren't you adopting those strategies for yourself? It just sounds like a refusal to learn from my perspective.
@@drageoksllechtim2078 that's why I said adopt and not copy, you observe and learn the strategies that are known to work and incorporate them into your own play style
Dapple Productions has just started doing this, but previously there were ZERO sets posted ANYWHERE. With badly promoted streams and very few places to watch competitors outside of them, no one knows anything about most Div X-level teams, and god forbid and d1 teams. We need sets to get spammed everywhere before anyone can even get a grasp of understanding about the scene. Also, me need more sites that do what sendou doesn’t.
Another part of it is that splatoon has no consistent schedule at top level. If you want to keep up with OWL, you just hop on UA-cam at the same time every week. If you want to watch Sayonara, you just have to hope they’re playing whatever tourney happens this week.
I think a big part of the problem with finding individual players compared to the Smash scene is just the nature of the games themselves. Smash is a 1v1 game with low camera movement and a stationary UI, so it's a simple task to keep the players' tags and facecam on the screen at all times. In comparison, Splatoon is a 4v4 game, with often very chaotic camera movement, where the player and even team whose POV you're watching switches every few seconds, all of the players aren't always on screen, and half the time you're not even sure which player you're watching because their tag doesn't show up in their POV. It wouldn't be impossible to have a display of all the players on each team and what weapon they're playing, but it is a significantly more difficult task, especially since not even the casters know for sure what weapon the players are picking before the match starts.
Good luck growing the scene my friend. There's a lot of elbow grease and extroversion needed to grow a community, so all you people who can go out and make things happen
So... I would like to add that a good idea is to start you introduction to the comp scene players and teams by searching your country or language comp organization, sure, not every country or place has it, but in my case as a Spanish player, being inside the spanish community was incredibly helpful to learn more about players and teams, and to look for advise in them for my weapon, playstyle or comp. Thanks to being inside the spanish community, I now know players like Daro, Koma, Carlox, Orion, Yokaru, Ayoaro, etc... All great players that are the top of Spain, but I now also know less international players that are still better than me and that can help me to understand the game better, like Dani, a div4-3 tetras player that is helping me to understand better how QR comps work, and my role in those teams as a stamper player. If you find a small, comfortable, and friendly community, with a good level (or at least better than you), you will eventually know other players that are friends with those inside the community, that's how I got to know Kip, a stamper player in the UK, he may not be a top player, being around div4-3, but that's still better than me and can help me understand the weapon more than I know.
As someone newer to splatoon i mostly want to learn and improve (this channel has been helpful for that) and also just like watching high skilled players play the game. I've not gotten that into watching tournaments yet so i'm unfamiliar with names of top players which doesn't help but either youtube is terrible at recommending them or a lot of comp players just don't make regular videos because while i could look harder chara, dude and kiver are the only people i've found who regularly upload
I’ve since retired but back when I was an avid comp player in s2, I looked up to Power so much as a charger player, ever since I found out about him and I even got the privilege to get his input; he’s kinda like thee charger player you think of but there’s plenty of other amazing charger players like Liotos (my homie lmao), skrub, marsel, bandit, q, latias, Brian, and just so many more talented players- I also find it difficult for people that aren’t familiar with comp to find chargers players since ballpoint is kinda taking up a lot of backline space right now, so just keep an eye out for the amazing chargers of the community as well as the plethora of other talent! Oh yes; excellent video as always gem keep up the great work and interesting perspectives we haven’t thought of !
In Splatoon 2 I remember there was a smaller tournament that did interviews, and the interviews were really interesting to hear. They weren't always the players (although sometimes they were) but someone who was also in competitive who watched the game. It's honestly something I hope happens more and at bigger tournaments.
Not everyone who plays this game and follows you is trying to get into competitive. I’m pretty sure most people here just want some good Splatoon tips and general opinions on the game. The western Splatoon content creator community is quite small so it really is just channels like yours, ProChara, Dude, and more people come to to hear about the game. Being pro players helps, but I don’t need someone to be a pro player to respect their opinions on stuff. Like as a tri stringer main, I could track down the greatest tri stringer main in the west for tips… or I could just sub to NBound and get some good ideas there on how to one shot more consistently or when to effectively use my toxic mist. I don’t really feel the need to track down the best of the best because I’m not interested at ever playing at that level. And I don’t think most people who play this game are. Hell, isn’t it only like 1% of the playerbase that even has X rank? I still don’t.
I'd also like to mention that a lot of people do prefer single player PoVs when trying to learn. If you want to learn how to play the game with a specific weapon, as a single player, it's just a lot more helpful.
@@starlightrai what they could do is just give the replay codes, then if someone wants to save it at least they can do that, or maybe even someone makes a youtube channel that just has PoV replays.
I think many communities would be better with these advice. Another game I really love is Pokken. But that game doesn't even have casual content creator. If you look now through twitch for vods, you can find ONE vod for a tournament and that was Top 4 only, the rest was not streamed. Only a few others streamed their perspective in an online tournament, but thats of course not the same as having someone to commentate and jump between matches if someone has to wait for the bracket to advance. Some of the biggest tournaments of the scene are actually side events that get carried by the name of an actual big event, but since pokken is only a side event, there is no stream to watch.
Another reason that we know so little about the competitive players could be that in a comp theirs only 1 star. For example, in Ydill 2 Prochara and Kyo where respectively in teams naming "Last resort" and "NFT", but I barely know who the other players are in that team. Maybe it's just me being hyped seeing them, in wich case this comment did lose you 2 min of you're time
What would be really cool but cumbersome is if the replays were able to be accessible outside of the game, like a video that has all 8 perspectives or if the switch app had the same functionality + a sort of filter for replays.
I also think the way splatoon is livestreamed is a problem I want to watch streams but I keep missing them because there isnt any accounts that notify about competitions before it happens
This is a great video. I feel like one of the issues is that splatoon is a team-based game, so it’s tougher to remember individuals, but potentially easier to remember teams. The double issue with that is top level teams don’t really have unique identities from an outsider’s perspective, especially with the double splash meta currently. Why should I invest in learning top level teams when they all have the same weapon comps?
Honestly, prochara is here yes but ngl almost everyone mentioned that prochara main stamper so they watch him for it, there is not a lot of stamper mains (excpet spore)
paused at 3:06 just to name this list of some of my favorite players... mostly from splat 2s hayday, some of them still play lol. pain from ink delta, pixel, mullin and lux from komodo, koutetsu, arashi (arashis hammer was awesome back in the day) and chara from prophesy. sun, bagel and .q from saynara. atomic from polar night. there are several more that i know but heres a short list of my favorite charger players cuz i wanna. power, latias, brian the drummer, 10sion, ice, thebarry.
Shame I didn't catch that short, because I've actually been getting into Volty's carbon deco gameplay a lot- and I found them through Chara, too! He mentioned them quickly in a tier list video as the top player, so I went out to search them and their content, and am trying to learn from them. Though I'll admit I haven't had an easy time finding anyone else that plays carbon deco.
Great video. I'm constantly trying to find small streams or vods of players who use the weapons I like, and you definitely have to unearth it! I hope for more comprehensive data, analysis, map strategy, and write ups in general
a lot of my absolute favorite players don’t seem to be doing much now which makes me sad, but kaji was always and still is my fav player cause she helped me reach x rank in splat2 and made heavy my best weapon. i also really look up to latias, ice, brian, and grey cause he was one of the best communicators and calm leader-like figures i had ever heard. seriously he felt like the glue of kraken paradise. when i listened to him in comparison to someone like sorin i was like wow… this dude is the antidote to tilt 🤣
Idk who that guy is but he plays a blaster L
L
Ain't no way it's the guy from the thumbnail
Wait isn’t that the guy who plays brella tho
Wait isn’t that the guy who plays brella tho
Yup
ProChara is a UA-cam content creator that mainly focuses on Splatoon Content. ProChara's content ranges from guides to live streams. ProChara's favourite weapons are the Range Blaster and Stamper.
No way they have heard of prochara!!
I remember when he wasn't keen on using the stamper. I think enough people insisted he try it and see if it was good as they claimed or overhyped. Made me happy to know he gave it an honest try - he played it over a month if i remember correctly - instead of writing it off within a week. The painting getting buffed didn't hurt either.
Some "competitive" players like to claim certain weapons are "bad" but never put in the time to get a good handle on them. A week is not long enough to really know for sure. Not every weapon is going to feel great, and that's understandable, but don't write it off just because you have difficulty with it. Someone else out there won't.
My problem is anything that makes me sluggish or has a painfully slow charge/windup. (Not every roller, charger, splatling, and tri-stringer falls into this but damn it if any of the weakest variants or slowest aren't infuriating to use during salmon run).
@@-Mizu- nice pfp.
@@SunshowerHeathcliffBeliever thanks :)
@@ShadowSkyXchara has never out right said a weapon is bad in splatoon 3 in fact he’s told people to play whatever they want since its kinda balanced
Thumbnail: have you heard of ProChara?
People who don't know: No, but we heard of ProChaira!
Don't worry about Prochara. He's just a dollar store Prochaira.😂😂😂
In fairness, when I watched chuggaa's splatoon 2 lp, I had no idea who Prochara was. I just knew that he was a guest, really good at splatoon, and been a fan and player since splatoon days. That was it. Competitive typically has tiers to it, and that's what he played in, and I had no idea where he actually stood within the competitive scene. It wasn't but a couple months later that I learned he was only a top player; no big deal or anything.😂
People who know:🫵😲
Chara turned into Prochita when he started maining Splatana Stamper
Funny enough, I'm almost certain ProChaira is Forge, who also plays competitively
As a newcomer to Splatoon, the community is WAAAAY too disjointed. People gather at creators like Dude, Chara, and even Squid School because it's easier than finding the 1000 Discords people have to sift through to find any info at all. The community is way too decentralized for the average person to know deeper information about it.
we need to go back to squidboards lol
i hate how many damn discord there are
i cant stress how much discord itself is hurting accessibility. theres no way to get access to the information posted inside of discord servers without joining yourself, and if you dont get advertised to the right servers its all locked away and untouchable by the majority of the player base. theres no popular twitter account, youtube channel, instagram, tumblr, etc that is outright posting the links to helpful documents, advertising competitions, where to join and look for teams, etc. i want to join the comp scene so bad, but i cant spend hours of my time searching discord servers for *other* discord servers just to find the information i need to start using the discord. i love reading about the strategies for team comps but im not sure how im expected to find this information when no one advertises it elsewhere, even the people competing (although maybe im just missing some big accounts, but it doesn't feel like it since im still in the dark about how to go about making/finding a team and what i do once i find one)
THIS! I still don't understand how this hasn't dawned on whoever's in charge of the discords. So much of the scene is just locked behind them, and Jonny Rando who just wants to make it to X rank isn't going to think of joining the server dedicated to high-level competitive play.
For real!! I hate using random discord servers that I know I'll never use again. Makes me miss online forums because those aren't that popular or even just use any other social media
I think the last reason you list is actually the most salient. I would wager that the vast majority of your audience isn't actually looking to get into the competitive scene. They are looking for easily digestible content that will entertain them and improve their gameplay. They are going to be largely solo queue players looking to climb up in Anarchy or X-rank at best. These people don't have the time and motivation to seek out specific top level players or gameplay footage. They don't have the knowledge to analyze and learn from that footage on their own without breakdowns from more knowledgeable content creators like yourself.
I know I fit into that category. I'm an adult with a full time job. I was an adult with a full time job when Splatoon 1 came out. I have other hobbies and can only dedicate so much of my time to this game. If I wanted to truly join the competitive scene I would likely have to give up a lot of the other ways I spend my time, which just isn't a commitment I'm willing to make. So it just doesn't make sense for me to spend time tracking down footage of players who play my weapons.
I think the vast majority of people consuming splatoon content online are looking for either lower level learning tools, or for the types of content you watch as an e-sports fan, not an e-sports player. They want to learn about the meta and the players in the type of way fans of IRL sports learn about them for their fantasy leagues. They want to see highlight reels of cool plays or get an understanding of strategies, but not necessarily so they can go out and join a team of their own.
^
this
as a pretty big fan of smash bros i absolutely love watching the many, many multi-hour long essay type youtube videos that go into detail on the story's of top level players and tournaments. And i would absolutely love to see some of those for splatoon too
we need the turndownforwalt of splatoon
Their upload schedule for it is kind of garbage but Toyoben is doing a interview series with top teams. Recently last resort was interviewed and I hope that translates into other teams getting a spotlight as well.
@@RandallPacks My thoughts exactly. That style of content would get players names out there
Yea as some one who loves video essay I would definitely watch something like this
aye im up for any hour (or more) long video essays
The large issue that I continue stating ever since Splatoon 2 is that finding event footage is not only hard for competitive players, but e-sports fans and viewers as well, resulting in situation where you can't conveniently follow the thing as a casual observer. It's kinda hard to appreciate the players when most of the time you can't see them in action, lol.
Sometimes, I also feel like competitive players can be a little callous toward the casual scene - many competitive or high-level players I see online, through Twitter or twitch, often regard casuals as ‘filthy’ or ‘stupid’. It also applies to when competitive players have to look at a mode like turf war from a casual perspective: for example, there was a video where Gem (if that’s how you spell his name) was talking about the Big Swig roller, and he was grousing about how people were telling him it’s a painting weapon and it’s more viable in turf war than other ranked modes, and he disregarded them in a way that sounded like he was being haughty. For one, the appeal of the Big Swig is literally to paint - bigger range, minimal consumption when rolling; even the Splatoon devs made nods at how it’s meant to cover turf and such via Sheldon. And two, he didn’t even bother to think about it from how a causal would see it, and didn’t explain ‘it’s not competitively viable’ - instead just saying it’s terrible and everyone who says it has some other purpose is wrong.
Another user talks about how competitive turf war is looked down upon by the competitive scene in the West, while in Japan turf war tournaments are viewed highly and get a lot of praise from people who see the ‘beginner mode’ can cater to all skill levels.
Maybe I’m looking too deep into it, but I still get the impression that the competitive scene will laugh us all away without taking the time to understand where we are trying to come from. And for the people who want to understand the competitive scene better, asking questions can feel like a dice roll to debate ‘how stupid will they think I am on a scale of 1-10’, or something.
That’s just how I feel, of course.
*wider range, not bigger range. Lmao, English 100
Yeah, why would I want to learn from someone who thinks turf war is the silly baby mode meant for silly casuals? Why would I want to learn from someone who thinks the weapon I like to play means I’m a bad or lazy player who can’t take the time to learn how to aim?
Granted, I don’t think I’ve actually seen these competitive players saying things like that, but if I were to find a post or video on twitter or youtube where they talk like that, I’d definitely nope on outta there. I’ll stick with relatively chill content creators 👍
I have found competitive TW interesting ever since I learned that Vanilla and Kensa L-3 were meta picks in S2’s TW tournament
Generally that’s my opinion on the pros of many communities.
In miniature modeling I’ve been told by countless pros why my painting isn’t perfect (add thinner, use primer, etc. yet they all tell me it like I’m stupid or that they’re personally insulted by my “casual practices”. I don’t want a masterpiece or something exact to real life. I just want to have a good looking miniature model of something I love. They just can’t respect that opinion.
I’ve seen a Similar thing with online gaming communities too. Pros generally aren’t kind to the more casual players who can’t dedicate much to the topic. I’ve had that issue with call of duty, battlefield, Star Wars, war thunder, splatoon, etc. it’s hard to swallow but pros just aren’t cooperative with the casual scene of their respective fandom, and it hurts to think that because they tend to hurt the growth of fandoms in my personal experience.
I want to mention about this, it just being a painting weapon isn't just saying it's only good in turf war. Just painting weapons AREN'T good in turf war. Weapons need to be able to do more than just paint to be good. Due to how unbalanced turf war is, a weapon that paints more isn't better. Even in casual, if a weapon can't survive and fight, it just means you die at important times and your paint output doesnt matter.
The problem is that nearly all the tips that top level comp players and players like gem give apply to all ranks and modes, but *some* casual players assume that because they're playing at a different level of play, the tips dont apply to them or they know better than these top players.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with playing turf war but the problem comes in when those lower level players try to dispute simple facts about the game and when competitive players with a thousand times the game knowledge they do tell them that they're wrong, they get mad at those players.
Everyone could do a better job communicating, I agree, but the people who are in the comment section calling people stupid for asking simple questions aren't "the competitive scene" as you refer to them. They're just people who have mechanical game knowledge and want to make fun of someone worse than them. You get that in every game's community.
Any player who cares about the game will answer your question no matter how basic, gem has made a lot of videos on how he will always answer any question asked in good faith with good intentions even if it's literally just "what does the zr button do."
I think you're just conflating annoying online trolls with actual top players.
For the first two official Splatfests, I kept running into team Seafoam on the opposing team every other match (before I realized who they were). This was before anyone cared to notice that 'Open' meant teams and 'Pro' meant solo. So for a long while when I kept getting matched against and kept getting crush I finally just took a break which I used to look up who this team was. At the time, very little videos I could find of them but what I did kind of had me in awe that I at least got to see them in action in real time. But mind you, when you're a mid-level casual splatoon player on a team with low-level casual players with no way to communicate/strategize during a Splatfest, the very last thing you really want to see on the other team is 'SF' before names.
Bro I ran into Kyo and B Marvs doing duos in Tricolor, that was not a fun match since they used .96 gal (no hate to that weapon you never know if your shots will land with it) and Sloshing Machine (the way better two shot kill weapon) and were spawn camping us attackers since we were both vastly outraged using the Splattershot (bad weapon matchup and map design). But from playing against other players I can tell are clearly better than me like in Anarchy and X battles, I do like seeing how they play in the replays and see how they won or lost that game.
@JustJames007 I don't think there is much if any balancing of teams going on for Tricolor battles. Which I guess fits the theme of chaos, plus locating 4 different teams to shove together is probably asking too much since you can't play normal Turf War for 3 games straight without there being a communication error. That aside, you definitely run into a strange mix of pros, sweaty high levels, mid level casuals, and low level kids in Tricolor. As cool as it is to see the pros on occasion in your own matches, I want them as far as possible from me during Splatfests.
TIL Open is for teams and Pro is for solo
I never know when tournaments are. I only ever know when there’s a tournament if it’s on Nintendo’s social media.
Before watching the video, I just want to chip in, the way how the Splatoon community functions is very akin to that of an indie game community (in terms of functional size). The vast majority of the millions of players are children most of whom don’t even know how to use the internet properly. The amount of young adults well-versed in communicating with others in a genuine fashion numbers in the few hundred thousands which, don’t get me wrong is still a large number, just a hard cry from the amount of people in the actual player base. Not to mention that there is some content made by Splatoon creators that are infamous for being bad, which turns a lot of people who would like Splatoon away from the community and the game by proxy (I won’t name names, I’m just saying).
That last thing you said, about creators who are bad in their main Video game turning people away is pretty harsh.
I don’t know who you’re talking about and what context there is but I don’t see how in general someone might be disinterested from a community because they watched someone bad, wich I believe can have the opposite effect.
I definitely agree
gee, cant wait for the next "i put tentacular circus over cursed splatoon images" with a giant kinemaster editor watermark, made by a 10 year old
I guess it's just because western audiences like blood and guts more than Japan.
I mean, a game doesn't have to have blood and guts to become a massive success (look at Minecraft), but Splatoon is now seen as that one game to shush your kids when they are being hyperactive. The community is a mixed bag as well, with most of the people in it basically being children who will go wild if you say one wrong thing about their game. Even Minecraft appeals to the adults with redstone and command blocks. If we really wanted to bring this discussion further, we need to understand how a game becomes popular.
This is a great point and a problem that Pokémon faces, though not as much. I think if nintendo were willing to hold more tournaments or even build some kind of circuit system like Pokémon has, it could bring more people into the competitive scene
I think there are four incredibly important things going on:
Team Game: Since any result in a Splatoon match is the providence of an entire team, individuals on that team are less recognizable. Also, weapons in this game, as different as they are, have way more similarities than characters in a fighting game, especially with how much the meta loves short range shooters rn. (As an aside, the incredibly stale Crab meta makes it harder to find top players playing the weapons that viewers actually want to see.) That, combined with the sheer number of options, make it hard to assign any one weapon choice with the same level of importance as a fighting game character. That's not even to mention people swapping their main weapons every time a new patch hits.
Small, exclusive scene: You mentioned a lot of good points about this, but there are a couple more elements to this. Because Splatoon is a team game, it is necessarily much more difficult to play in a more casual venue, such as friendlies at a Smash event. This leads to any place that could facilitate these kinds of interaction having necessarily higher bars to entry, as you need to get 8 people together for a game of Splatoon to happen. Also, the mere fact that so much of this game's community lives on Discord makes it necessarily difficult to reach out beyond that walled garden.
State of the game: Some constraints are endemic to how we watch this game and how we talk about it. The camera in any tournament vod is constantly hopping from player to player. This isn't how Smash works. If you are watching a set in Melee, you are watching everything the two players are doing. Most of the time, any individual on a Splatoon team is getting their perspective shown for less than a minute total, over several smaller cuts. Also, when I watch tournament sets, it feels like a lot of casters spend more time popping off then they do explaining. That's all well and good when what's happening on the screen is obvious, but I've found myself several times wondering if I was missing something with how people were reacting that made it an awkward experience.
The scene you have, and the scene you get: When you describe that players have to be willing to go out and find new people to watch, that seems incomplete to me. There won't be a scene that seeks out top players to watch without those top players having more of a presence first. You mentioned some good ideas to fix this, but here's a couple more I thought of:
- Cameras. Easier to connect with a player if I can see them
- Individual perspectives. Please.
- Focus on the players. As you mentioned, it seems like a lot of the best known players are the people making content about it. Maybe focusing content of those creators on individual players could help with the discovery problem.
- Spectacle. There just isn't the same kind of personality, bombast, and spectacle surrounding the Splatoon community as there is around other communities. It's a bedrock difference, and I don't really know what to do about it. That will have to come from within the top levels of the game.
I think the biggest difference between Splatoon and Smash is simply the lack of local tournament scenes. It's so much easier to ask a better player for advice when you're literally sitting next to them. You can see whether or not they're busy or in the mood to answer questions. Sending a DM online often feels like you're inconveniencing someone by asking for their time.
Unfortunately, the team game format makes small, local tournaments not really feasible in the way it is for 1-on-1 games.
I think it is a three part problem. First is that the scene is smaller and second is that that footage is harder to find both of which you mentioned in the video.
Something you didn't mention with regards to the second problem is how much harder it is to find VOD's in game due to how Splatoon handles replays and how that affects how hard it is to find footage even on youtube. I play fighting games and in a lot of those I can just search for replays of matches played in ranked in game and find two top players playing against each other. This is probably also why it is so easy to find videos of top players playing for the games I play, people go online and post those matches on youtube without the players having to do so.
The last problem is moreso a problem inherent to Splatoon and team games in general, players are associated more with teams rather than themselves. People are more likely to know that Sayonara had a member who used a Ttek during Nintendo Cup than they are to know which of Sayonara's players used the Ttek.
I agree, finding the footage at times is quite the challenge. Another issue I see within the Splatoon community are the smaller creators who main X weapon and don't get to be seen much due to the lack of numbers at times. Even though I'm a lower level H3/96/Brella player I want to push these weapons in X rank to become higher level. Another issue I have as a creator is I don't have the big enough following yet to say I can do what I love of playing Splatoon and make something out of it then justify grinding X amount of hours almost every day, edit the videos, and upload. I still do but I upload every couple of days and slowly make the videos better.
The last thing you mentioned was exactly my thought too. Agree otherwise as well
One more problem. Nobody wants to watch 4 hours stright of splatoon on stream. It's why soccer matches are played for an hour there is a gap for several hours, another match wait till next weekend 2 more matches.
You will find it difficult to keep people's attention for a longer time rather than a shorter time.
So if possible I think online tournaments especially should be an hour at most in one day and span several days.
PikaDave is sick. He's on cherry limeade and he's posted that awesome match with the perfect tristrikes you did a video on but from his perspective with comms and everything (He also threw the strikes)
I also watch arashi stuff since I main wiper and I love ultra stamp :)
Original comment was: hey did you guys know prochara is
Really cool
@@honukane242 I edited it because that comment was cringe and unfunny honestly
@@RiahGreen based
I've found Arashi to be quite helpful while learning Wiper. Splatana's have such a high skill ceiling and I'm always looking for more places to learn it from.
cherry limeade is so awesome :D
I think another thing is that casters and commentators don't always know the names of everyone in the match, and there's not always player cams so it's harder to remember those players.
i noticed him splatting someone named "gayfurry" with stars around it, and i immediately recognized it as someone ive played agaist
This guy ProChara is so underrated, he’s this content creator than makes videos about the game from a competitive standpoint. Most people haven’t heard of him and you should check him out, he’s really cool
i swear chara just popped into the youtube scene without warning it was kinda insane lol
I think my main problem I’ve had when I’ve tried looking for gameplay for my weapons is that it’s hard to find specific match ups for your weapons especially when there’s a lot of weapons that aren’t as commonly played at top level. Like if I wanted to learn how to play against a blaster player as a tri slosher player I not only have to find a vod with the tri slosher player but also find one where that player goes up against a blaster player. On top of that maps greatly change the effectiveness of weapons meaning I may not even learn as much about positioning or other map related specifics for my weapons since pros don’t play on a lot of the maps/game modes.
Another big thing is that top level players often are playing with and against a coordinated team. There’s definitely stuff to learn from that but there’s also a lot of stuff I just simply can’t put into practice in x rank. So often times since content creators upload x rank gameplay they have way more useful footage and insights about how to play their weapons even if they’re not the best in their category because I’m actually able to put the stuff into practice.
thank fucking god for this video. i have a huge issue of not knowing who to watch other than squid school and occasional streams for tourneys. i feel like we definitely need a major spreadsheet of all the high level players that are divX, and what weapons they play.
I get a few comments on my channel here and there saying they came to my channel because of a squid school video. I'm 90% sure its this one , so thank you ❤
I loved your section on what top level players can do and what they're doing wrong. That's such a hard topic to give justice to, and yet, you did
I'll do justice to the Carbon Roller players 👊
Gem deserves all the support he gets! I talked to him briefly and he was always respectful and kind. He genuinely lives what he speaks here-
the reason why, honestly, is how different pro smash looks, compared to what most people can do, vs how different pro-splatoon looks, vs what people can do.
pro-smash, looks fundamentally different, with it's speed, combos, and sometimes ridiculous gameplay. it's fundamentally different to what casual looks like, and anyone with an even passing interest in getting better will latch onto different players. like, even if you don't understand the nuances of neutral, or the depth of play, it looks fundamentally different.
pro splatoon? I'll be honest, most of the time, it looks *very similar*, and if you don't understand coordinated set play, all you really see is the players being good, but good in a way that looks very similar to lower levels of play. you can think "if I just get good aim, and quick reflexes, I'd be like them", which is wrong, but it's the sort of casual wrong that means Splatoon doesn't entice you to "latch onto" a variety of players.
I'd have a hard time spotting a top player in going solo in most lobbies, and I'd have a hard time describing even a top team playing against me.
put me against any number of smash players though, from low level competitive through to top, and if I survive long enough to play for more than 20-30 seconds a stock, and I could probably rattle off any number of things, because Smash presents itself so much better than shooters do. I can know what my opponent is doing that much more, and thus I'm in a better position to recognise good play when it's being used against me.
The funny thing is outside of stamper and wiper gameplay all chara does (content wise before you twitter users come with pitchforks) is tier lists lmao
its so true, i joined the comp scene just recently and i dont get in touch with the highest level, i recently wanted to improve at the stamper and wanted a top level coach i dont have to pay money to cause i am broke, but i didnt know who is up there.
When i was in the ultimate scene I got pretty quickly into the top players i should know.
To be fair expecting a top level coach that you dont have to coach is some pretty high expectations
@@evelynn1173 not like top top level but a very good one
@@kunuto8807 sorry I meant don't have to pay instead of don't have to coach. But even very good ones aren't probably going to work for charity its like asking a random artist on the internet to draw something for you without paying them
@@evelynn1173 also i wouldnt compare it, i think if i asked they would help me improve at art too. thats two diffrent things in my opinion
@@kunuto8807 as an artist no. Other bigger artists don't tend to help out smaller artists personally for free. Because there are so many people who want help why would you be the expection. You need to pay people for their work. Artists only really help out other people using UA-cam which isn't very helpful for figuring out personal issues.
My pushback is that for me personally, I’m not trying to become a super good competitive player. I don’t have the time or energy to spend to get super good, so I play for fun. I agree that for people serious about Splatoon it’s important to watch high level play and analyze it, but for me I’m comfortable sitting at S rank.
I also prefer Salmon Run so I often check Hazmy’s posts about the current rotation and tips for those, but that’s about it. All the people I play with are casual and mostly less skilled than me, so getting better doesn’t have much draw for me.
Absolutely. Agreed ten-fold here. Competitive just does not have 'The Draw' that it does in other Competitive Scenes. No reason to get honestly really awesome unless you wanna just crush everyone all the time.
...and doing that isn't fun anyways. The game is geared towards 'have fun' so Competitive is going to Flounder a lot more.
@@SilverFennX Additionally, we already know the top team is pretty much unbeatable currently. Who wants to shoot for #2?
And, even with Salmon Run, if you 999 every map, what's left? This game is kind of a conundrum.
if you like Salmon Run, I definitvely recommend Brian (@Brianthedrummer) and Latteboi ! Brian often has the comms between him and his teammates so it's very insightful to hear what they say to each other and helps me understand timing better, and Latteboi is just the gameplay, very relaxing to watch.
Yeah.. competitive is just not for me. I like playing for fun…
Same for me, I never really cared about any competitive scene in any game, I just want to be a good player at the games I play and that’s it
Dude, I tried, I tried so hard to find ANYONE that was top-tier playing my main, and they simply do not exist. There are dozens and dozens of top Splash players, nobody in competitive is playing Squelcher Dualies, I have NO pro references, not even Chase247 is a good reference from me because he is on the record MULTIPLE TIMES saying he hates the Squelcher Dualies. So if I want to learn a weapon, with the crazy stupid meta we're in, my choices appear to be switch to Splash or quit. I have spent HOURS looking for footage of Squelcher Dualies footage for people playing even in low-level tournaments and it simply does not exist. I've poured over Sendou looking for any team with a Squelcher Dualie, and the ones that do list Squelcher Dualie have swapped it for Splash because it's objectively better due to Crab Rave. You know how many videos are listed for Squelcher Dualie on Sendou? EIGHT. By comparison, Splash has around 70 entries on Sendou for videos.
For me, this is a meta problem first and foremost. I either play the game in a way I don't have any desire to play it, being a slave to the crab rave, or I leave. Take a guess which I've chosen at this point.
Gem, it isn't OUR fault that no one knows who comp players are when NONE OF THEM put themselves out there! Chara has talked about this MULTIPLE TIMES on both of his UA-cam channels! These people don't make any content or post any of their matches with commentary and it's limiting their ability to brand themselves. I know not everyone has time to play the game religiously and do content at the same time, but a ton of these guys DON'T EVEN TRY to post anything! Chara has yelled at Biscuit and Bagel for not making more videos and I agree with him! They are both incredible players who know their weapons better than anyone else but they won't share that knowledge with anyone in a meaningful way! And yes actually I CAN name a few comp players (idk if they still play competitive or not) AngleBagel (who I got all my Nautilus tips from and is the sole reason I can play the weapon competently) Biscuit (another amazing naut player), Kiver, Kyo, Arashi, DUDE (obviously) Chase247, and Brian (I think he mains chargers) MHFsilver, and ShockWavee (another incredible Nautilus player). But despite knowing who some of these people are, I only know them from Splatoon 2 and not Splatoon 3. The new people who represent the competitive scene don't do anything except stay in their little discord bubbles and refuse to branch outward to reach a wider audience. I would LOVE to follow some of these players but I don't use Twitter all that much because it's a horrible trash website and I don't like Discord because the UI confuses me. If they made tictoks or UA-cam shorts or UA-cam videos making guides or commentaries on their matches I would watch the shit out of that! BUT THEY DON'T DO THAT! HOW IS THAT MY FAULT!?
Edit: I'm glad you touched on this in your video.
You mentioned good reasons for why it's hard for new viewers to learn about players, but I think a big part of this is the in game UI doesnt do a great job of helping someone unfamiliar keep track of which players are playing which weapon for which team. The caster might say x player was splatted and if it's not the exact interaction shown on screen I often don't know what weapon that player is playing (if by the time I look up at the HUD there are multiple splatted players) and sometimes I'm not even sure what team they're on. Learning who plays what and for whom has been a slow process as someone who just started paying attention to competitive Splatoon.
I'd point to something like overwatch's spectating UI as one that does a great job of having static information to consistently refer back to, to help learn the game and players(the player names being displayed underneath the character portraits especially). I know it would be extremely difficult for production to do that with Splatoon's spectating feature but I think it's a shortcoming that could hopefully be addressed in other ways.
I feel like it partially is also because not a lot of people at that high level (or even just people that are seen as ‘good’ or ‘knowledge’ make content, or that there isn’t an effective way to find this content if it does exist. People think Chara a lot because Chara makes a ton of content, same with Dude, same with Kiver, same with you. Also it doesn’t help that a lot of the top level is in Japan, so there’s a language barrier there.
People just don’t know who is too level because we don’t see them outside of specific tournaments, and people don’t talk about them a lot. I only know of half the people I know because of random Twitter algorithm. And even then, I don’t *know* them. I think that people need to make more content about high level, need to advertise it better, and need to categorise or even just label it better.
Tournament organisers could be a massive help in this. I feel like tournament vods are pretty unwieldy at times, nobody’s gonna sit through a 4 hour vod that probably won’t even show what they need. Well, nobody outside of people who are obviously dedicated enough to try and find other, more efficient uses of their time. Timestamps of matches would be good, something like:
“Winner’s Final Set 1 - Starburst vs FTWin”, with the teams’ rosters and sendouink links in the description could go a long way.
Also I would love to see more interviews of players, putting a name and a face and an actual *person* behind a player goes a long way.
Sorry if this seems incoherent, I am currently writing this in class and only half focussed lmao
I think you've got great points here. Aligns fully with what should happen with Competitive and even makes it easier to process. Knowing names and faces, even if its just Splatoon Character Faces can be absolutely important towards connecting a player to their likeness.
Also, consistency. I have seen that its more likely that a Pro or Comp player changes their gear around *constantly* instead of keeping a favorite set for most uses. Why? The game is significantly more geared towards being 'Fresh' and fancier by allowing to change abilities even on the MAIN ability of gear. I don't get this, we need more people to settle on 'this is what I use' rather than have a Man 'O Wardrobe in their own back pocket... xD
i feel like a lot of top splatoon players have similar names
for example, luna or storm are rlly popular names that are relatively popular at top level
edit: this isnt a bad thing, it just could be a little confusing for people who are new to the comp scene
There literaly was a Luna in every 5th lobby in splatoon 2 times. Luna was such a common name in s2 now i see none
I think we’ll be fine considering how many people are named John in real life.
@@mimipeahes5848 you make a compelling argument
“A compelling argument”? Not really! Second names, the obvious answer to this issue, only work when people use them!
@@TorchesUponStars I doubt all the Lunas are on the same team and play the same weapon. Most players have team tags in their in game names as well and if there is a need people can differentiate them by their game IDs! It’s only a problem if make it one. Splatoon is not the only game in the world where there are common tags.
Thank you so much for what you do everyday for the competitive scene and Splatoon community overall, Gem!
11:34 It's so true. I love watching Chase, but I'd like to see more. It's tough only being able to pick out a couple words from a Mashu or Kanzaki Ayame stream for tetras haha.
It's torture to know just enough Japanese to see that those players are making videos dedicated to giving really detailed and specific advice for the weapon, but not knowing nearly enough Japanese to actually understand what they're saying.
The knowledge seems to always be just out of reach.
This video is very convenient because I’m someone who got into the more comp side of splatoon recently, so hearing about sendou’s video sort feature is a god send.
I don't style myself as a someone who wants to be a comp player, I'm more like someone who plays hockey casually but sometimes watches clips. But, this is cool, and I do generally want to improve. My favorite splashtag title is "Self-Taught Heavy Splatling User" because most of my strategy that I know is more about what I've learned myself, but learning from more top level heavies might help me get better. And I want to! But that's its own thing, I suppose.
Banger video. Inspiring me to make more content so I can be the next Ttek up the ladder!
I think the scene just generally lacks a maturity and the perspective that comes with it. I’m not talking about children playing the game casually, but about most of the higher level players who do skew older. Too many don’t seem to care that having a different name in game, on discord, and on Twitter could be a problem.
A major problem right now is most tournaments get about as many viewers as they do participants. If we want to be a real esport, we need spectators. We need fans. How can anyone be a fan of you if they can’t even connect the dots on who you are tournament to tournament? Or they have no idea when you’ll play again? Imagine if NFL teams changed names and players constantly and you didn’t know if the team you liked was playing on Sunday or not?
Top players are competitors at heart and I can sympathize that they’ve focused on little else other than getting as good at the game as possible. But I think at this stage, growing the scene and getting people to care more is more important than winning tournaments no one is watching.
I got my fiancé (ex LOL player, will be important later) into splatoon recently, we were watching the vod review from PAX. We get a game in and he goes, "so, who's the Faker in splatoon? The famous one that will be used in every ad in existance for the competitve scene?" I just sat there a moment before going, "we don't really have that"
This video had some good timing! I definitely think we're lacking in top tier gameplay. Where am I supposed to find Explosher tips?
Brian is a good player to look at, I know he's played some Explo. Top player in EU, also top salmon runner.
After watching this, I immediately got recommended a video of a smash tournament with the player names and characters in the title. Guess UA-cam knows how to prove a point
i think the main problem is that most people want to be better, but don't strive for the top. a lot of people just want some small tips to improve, but have other obligations or things that they want to do more. a lot of the things you talk about here might help getting people into being serious about improving, not just searching for little tips to help win in A rank.
one of the problems i find myself having is that, even if there are tournament vods, it can be hard to watch it and break down why players do what they do. not to mention that the perspective shifts around a lot, which makes it much harder to watch if you're looking for a specific weapon. if we had more videos of players pausing the replays, talking about their own perspective, what they were doing, and why they did it, it might push people to actually invest time into learning more.
also, if you play a more niche weapon, it makes it much harder. i've watched a bunch of your videos with devvy in them, since i main hydra, but i can't imagine how people who play weapons like brella right now. even then, a lot of that content ends up focusing more on backlines as a whole, which makes me wish she had more content more into specifics on her own channel. having top players who specialize in the weapon actually put out content for it would help immensely.
I don't know how to watch or keep track of any players. Every time I try to search for them I rarely get results. I'll happily watch matches and follow people who play my weapons, if I could just find those replays.
wow i didn't know characther from undertale has gone pro.
Great video on the subject! I think about this a lot, and while I mostly agree, I'd like to add a bit more thoughts of my own into this.
I think more top players should be making content. And that can be anything from clips, highlights, or even vod dumps. Preferably content with an idea would be better, but I understand not everyone has the time or even wants to do that, so recording a session would be more than enough to help others. As far as teams and teammates getting more recognition, the interviews is a great start, but we should really approach this with a marketing lens. Competitive Splatoon just doesn't enter the conversation with anyone outside of the community. We're not really known for much, and ironically meme pages on twitter do a better job at marketing competitive ideas than comp players. I get it, they just want to play the game and have fun with nothing to worry about beyond that, but theirs a burden of accountability on us for the outcome. Memes and "inside jokes" really go a long way. Just like Smash has "destruction" and Tetris has "Boom, Tetris for Jonas." These are things that slowly get us into the general competitive zeitgeist.
Some styles of content that would greatly supplement the scene would be turndowforwalt style documentaries on tournaments, or the rise of a certain player no one has heard of. A good story will always be more compelling than just pumping out content only to question why the work isn't resonating. Videos like this would get the attention of non Splatoon players too. Another great idea I think would be showcasing the top 10 players of a season. (genuinely surprised JP doesn't do this already) That would do wonders for up and coming players, and can be just what someone needs to get the recognition they deserve for their skill.
For me personally, the competitive community takes a massive hit when it comes to how we discuss things. The discourse is polluted with the binary line of thinking of a weapon either being meta or trash. How does this push the conversation forward? And how am I expected to participate in this dialogue when most content creators refuse to address that issue? I main Dapples. I've been a Dapples one trick for years. As you mentioned in the video, it's a bit irritating to see a content creator who doesn't know much about a weapon play it and come to a concrete conclusion on it, only to never touch it again. This does more harm than good. I'm not under the illusion that Dapples is better than Splash, just that it can do so much with the cards it's been dealt. At the very least a lot more than people realize. I hope to make an in depth guide on the weapon in the future. That might be my only contribution to the competitive side of the community.
Another thing to ask ourselves is what got us into competitive Splatoon in the first place? For me it was ranking up in Solo. I know many others relate to this as well. So what can we do with that information? We can capitalize on solo content as the gateway into the comp scene. Videos like "how this tournament made me top 500" would be the kinds of ideas that get people more interested in the scene. Let's be real, solo will always get more views over scrims/ tournaments, partially because the weapon variety. Also, how does a players skills translate into an environment where you can't communicate? It's a much more interesting scenario by design. A tournament with triple splash can not compete with one splash and 3 low tiers somehow making it work from an entertainment stand point. This doesn't mean we sacrifice tournaments by working around these parameters, but more so an opportunity to explore how we can integrate these elements into what we have already.
This was just a dump of ideas and thoughts more than anything else. I would love to work with anyone as far as content to get the word out for tournaments, scrims, or top players in general if anyone is up for it. I would love to have that conversation with anyone that wants to make content. The Splatoon community means so much to me, and I want to help in any way that I can. While I don't have the most free time these days, it would still be cool to work alongside this area of creators. Thank you Squid School for opening the dialogue up and encouraging others input. Your channels a real Gem ;)
"id like to add a bit more thoughts to this" **recites the bible**
@@hy2rochlor1c lmao when I was done typing all that I was like daaaaamn nobody's gonna read this haha
I’m really into saxophone and this reminds me of how literally every time I talk to someone at my school who plays saxophone, even ones who play seriously and want to major in it, have no idea who Charlie Parker is. The greatest saxophone player of all time. They know Kenny G! But not Sonny Rollins or John Coltrane. And the ONLY reason they know Kenny G is because of relatives or memes or something, not because they’ve actually listened. It’s sad to me because like I know probably 50 or so famous saxophone players and and can name their top songs and what they sound like, heck I can even name some of their set ups. I can argue why I like one better than the other. So it’s just like a culture shock to know that these saxophone friends I have who play say, 3 hours a day like me, have no idea ANY of it. But they do know content creators like BetterSax and Scott Paddock. So I guess it’s my job to teach them.
I never knew about that sendou feature, that's pretty cool! Thankfully as someone who plays splash, I can go to almost any set and find top level gameplay.
I mean, can you really blame low level players/mid level players? Nobody wants to watch the same 5 to 6 weapons being played every match. like, if I wasn't good at splatoon, who am I supposed to watch for splat roller? SPLAT ROLLER?
Watching top level players is good for you, you can see what higher level players are doing, and learn from them, but not unless you're planning on using the meta, or whatever other weapon they happen to enjoy using at that time.
I think there's a grand canyon sized gap between top level and mid level players/solo players that we refuse to acknowledge. Most competitive content creators, such as prochara (to provide a good example since they've been gaining more popularity), or any top level competitors, shouldn't be treated as gospel up to a certain point.
Starting with content creators, now I'm not going to say I know better than them, but thats also not to say they know better than you or me. Its a good idea for players to seek out more information from more experienced players, but its not a blanket source for everything you want/need. In fact, the majority of prochara's tips are mostly focused on coordinated environments, which the majority of the player base has little to no access to. For example, the recent quick respawn video Prochara made had a disclaimer in it that literally stated that the strategy showcased in said video wasn't going to be very good in solo. Another example is that while prochara is very experienced, they're not experienced in every single weapon in the entire game. They can provide good basics for the majority of them, but that does not mean they know best. For example, Prochara has made plenty of balance change idea videos in the past, and in one of them, they wanted to increase the damage that roller's rolling did. Now as a splat roller main myself, I know for a 100% guaranteed fact that rolling with a roller is completely and utterly useless in 99.99% of situations. It would be a buff sure, but that doesn't fix the main issue that rolling has, and thats basically walking face first into bullets. We really should acknowledge the fact that just because they are good at the game and make content, does not mean you should be getting 100% of your information from just that one source.
Which is the start of my next point, that not everyone uses every single weapon in the entire game, so you can't just watch one person for tips on your weapon. You can get the basics from them sure, but only if you're a low level player, most basic tips you probably already know by mid to higher levels. There's also less popular weapons you can't find anyone for tips, such as weapons nobody uses such as splat roller, dapple dualies, or L-3 for example. These weapons are currently very weak, so most people don't use them at all.
Which segways into my next point, top level players. You're completely out of luck with trying to learn from them, especially for those weaker weapons. You're only really going to find anything on, at the very least, viable weapons. Say I had absolutely zero interest in ever using any of the current meta weapons, I only ever want to use Splat roller for the rest of eternity, I'm just never going to find top level players using splat roller for tips unless they buff splat roller into the meta. Which just makes watching top level players almost completely useless for myself.
My main point I'm trying to get across is this: there is a MASSIVE gap between solo players & mid/low level players and coordinated team players & top level players. A perfect example is the Tenta missiles argument, these two groups are playing WILDLY different games! Shell, even just what WEAPON you're using makes the game entirely different! We should be trying to bridge this gap as a community, at least as best we can. Because not everything is in a vacuum, we don't all experience the same game, each group has their own little world, so not every single peice of advice you can give to solo/low mid players actually works.
One of the big things I noticed since coming over from smash was frankly the lack of vods in general. It's a lot harder to get a recording setup working with Splatoon than say, Melee, where if you're desperate enough you can just use Dolphin and OBS. That's actually no small part of why I've attempted in the past to get my own recording setup working-I say attempted because I failed, but that's a whole different can of worms,- Sendou's video section is a great step forwards in what I've seen, but at present it still feels like TOs are very often going without vods, which in an online game like this? They should feel more willing to try and reach out to content creators, see if they can get them as a stream host or something. If the scene is already taking so many cues from Smash, why not having players commentate so that we can get a few more vods?
This should be a public PSA and mandatory watch for all splatoon players
ProChara is the only person I know by both gameplay, team name, channel and name.
I only saw some top players but can't name anyone else
One of my favourite top players is Latias who've I've been watching every now and then since Splatoon 2. She's an Aussie which made me feel proud that my country had some representation in the competitive scene and she's the reason I decided to main chargers in Splatoon 2 and still do to this day.
Oh yeah i remember her. Iirc she played splatlings
@@SJrad She does play splatlings. She is flexible with many backline weapons. However, she stated that eliter and splatterscope are her "true" mains.
Since not a ton of people have the time to go out of their way to search for top-level players who play their weapon (and sift through them to find which ones are _really_ the best instead of settling for someone like Chase247), could you possibly make a video listing best player(s) for as many weapons as you can...?
i think a documentary similar to the popular one from the melee community would really help people learn about top level players and connect with their stories in a more entertaining way than interviews in between sets. watching that doc made me really excited to learn more about smash, and i think splatoon would really benefit from meeting the best players and learning about competitive history.
What I’ve done is find the Japanese word for my weapon and search it up on youtube. It might not be the best but I found a good dualie squelchers main called Suryu and I’ve been improving from him.
i've been competitive for over 3 years and even i struggle to know of top level players and teams sometimes. part of that is just that i dont watch enough tourney play, and honestly that's just a personal failing. but i think so much of the scene is personal on twitter rather than in the tourneys and vids, and it feels almost insular sometimes even when i'm already fairly deep in the community.
I did not know about that feature on sendou and i am now eternally grateful, I've been struggling to find good flingza footage
I have always known of ProChara as “that one insufferable Splatoon player who’s insanely good at the game, but also teaches you how to be insanely good, in a way that you can understand without getting lost in the details”
To me, you and him are the only ones who can get through my 7ft thick skull 😂
why’s he insufferable?
@@busofselfdoubt maybe not insufferable per say, but abit on the intense side, that might be why you end up learning from him even if you don’t want to. Every time I watch his videos I always have something new to apply, like with Gem.
Same here 😂
@@WildWildWeasel Yeah, he's autistic so he sometimes has problems with tones and stuff
A key thing to note is how involved the competitive side of the game is with the game itself.
Counter Strike (Mainly GO, but also 2 by extension) features competitive news on it's library page as well as in game.
Meanwhile, Splatoon, I actually can't even remember whenever they've announced the winners in even a Nintendo Online News Post.
I'm not saying CS is the same thing either given how weapon picks function there, of course. But I can't readily say it's easy for someone like me to keep up with competitive news since for the most part I have to actively search for it.
Great video! I’m surprised you didn’t talk about ProChara, you should talk about him next! /j
this was a really good video in showing the gaps between the community and the competitive scene. my first ever experience watching a competitive game was the Splatoon 3 Splatsville Showdown tournament and i had SO much fun talking about it on the squid school server while it was going on! while i'm pretty much just a casual fan, i would love to watch competitive splatoon and see what goes down on that side of the community, so i hope going forward some of these things like interviews and easier access to VODs become a thing. i would seriously love to watch some cool splatoon matches go down :]
I also feel like the top players in splatoon are incredibly inaccessible to people outside of their bubble without paying for a metafy lesson. Because our top-level scene is so small, it feels incredibly exclusive, especially given all of the recent coverage of PAX. It's awesome that our community is so tight knit but it's also hard to break past people in your relative division and meet people higher than you. To put it simply, in my experience, people aren't interested in scrimming or even associating with players beneath them without a reason ($$$) to.
For example, as a bucket user, I would LOVE to get to know Kyo! But how would I go about doing that? Would sliding into his DMs be appropriate, as a div 11 player who just joined a team 2 months ago? Why would he give me his time of day when he's busy 1. living his life outside of squid game and 2. being a top level player? Not sure if he even has the time / energy to respond to a random DM asking for advice. The closest I can probably get to Kyo! would be through his AMAs, but that's about it. There's an inherent barrier that exists between people online, which only increases tenfold when there's prestige and infamy attached to one of the people.
Also, if we were to contrast Splatoon to professional sports (I am a basketball girlie), people often know individual players waaay before they understand a team, and it's all got to do with promotion and highlights. As you mentioned, the current state of VODs is incredibly inaccessible to people -- you and Chara help by handpicking matches and uploading them individually onto UA-cam. But even then, we don't focus on individual players, we focus on team strategy and synergy. It's hard for people to know about individuals when we literally don't focus on it. If we want to get individuals to be known in the scene, then we NEED to be able to put top-level players out there. Splatoon content creators are incredibly visible and honestly I'm not sure whether other top players WANT to be as visible as y'all. There's really no incentive for them to be known (unless there was money in it).
I make it a habit to remember the name of the team because I don’t have the best memory and remembering hundreds of individual players would put me in a coma. I could tell you what comp a team runs (usually) but cannot tell you the players. Also so I don’t make the fallacy of thinking that popularity = skill and that all the best players are content creators. Instead of thinking of Prochara it would be better to think of Last Resort. This is a TEAM game after all. Individual skill is important as brought up in the video, people need more learning resources. But following a team and finding out that one of the players plays a weapon you like then following them to learn more is the way I go about it.
11:11 I love the last resort stream vods chara has been putting out of them just playing anarchy or salmon run or whatever, they are so funny together and I want more of them :)
English-language Splatoon creators always ignore the most popular mode for the wider casual playerbase - Turf War. Instead, they whine about it & think it's beneath them. Japanese content creators don't make that mistake & are rewarded for it with views.
Even on this Squid School channel, its 2nd most popular video EVER is Turf War related.
Not only that, English-language creators always deride competitive Turf War. Like how this channel put out a "Can Turf War Be Played Competitively?" debate video a month ago.
On the other hand, a competitive Japanese Turf War tournament with elementary school students can get 10-20x the viewership of the biggest English-language tournament.
Sometimes, looking at things from a different perspective is helpful.
I get the same impression sometimes from the top-level community regarding solo queue. There's just this general air of it being regarded as a "lesser" mode.
The goal should be taking those turfwar views and exposing them to other modes. If none of the people who watch turf war content watch any of the other modes, you’re not actually gaining anything because those fans don’t share your values and don’t care about the wider community.
It’s a potential gateway, but chasing views does not build a scene.
@@ccznen As someone steadily trying to improve in solo queue before putting myself out there to join a team, I feel so alienated when most of the resources for learning to play better are all from a team standpoint. I get that Splatoon is a team game, and that at the competitive level teamwork and team strategy means more than individual skill, but it's a chicken or egg scenario. And because I'm too shy to look up random scrims on discord servers, I'm stuck in this hell until I manage to get over the anxiety.
Turf War is popular because it's the bread and butter of this game. It's the only gameplay shown off in marketing and promotional material. While yes, it has a wide reach it's not the same as getting that reach on a competitive scrim or a high-level ranked mode. While you can get the attention of a casual audience like that many of them will exclusively watch and play turf war and not go anywhere else.
In addition, to your point about the JP school kids, Japan's splatoon scene is as big as, if not bigger than the entire rest of the world combined, so it's naturally going to experience more views. If you look at a top western player's content and find a JP player of similar skill, the Japanese one will generally have more views.
I do think there is a stigma against turf war, but I'd argue that it's warranted because the other four modes offer more complexity and are inherently more conducive to competition than turf war. Turf doesn't test attributes like special coordination, positioning, objective awareness, mechanical ability, etc. as well as the other modes. Each of the four "real" modes rewards a different kind of playstyle that allows for a plethora of weapons to shine. RM for example likes high DPS and high-mobility/the ability to rotate from defense to offense and back quickly for example which allows otherwise overlooked weapons to come up like the Sploosh 7 from the last game. In Turf War, the only playstyles are "I paint and stay alive" and "I paint and stay alive".
@@MegaSpark24 turf war may be the forefront for marketing material, but it’s still a game mode at the end of the day. Think of it like Mario Kart - it’s extremely simple on the outside and easy for anyone to get into, but when it gets intense, it gets INTENSE. Playing turf war doesn’t inherently give someone a weaker mindset competitively: it’s a different mode with different goals and different strategies. It may be more simple on the outside but i believe that top level play for turf war is a real thing that can be achieved and enjoyed.
I highly recommend listening to the Popcast for anyone trying to familiarize themself with competitive play. It's run by popgun, who Gem name dropped a couple times here. It's a weekly podcast basically just talking about what happened in comp that week, and it's been super helpful for me to hear what names come up frequently
Where can I find this? I’ve been looking for a Splat podcast for the longest time
not me learning japanese just to watch top level jp squiffer players 💀
Prichard damn near killed me I'm gonna call him that on his next video
I missed the original question but my 3 would be Naegora (3900xp heavy) Kelp, high level heavy, and magiace, hydra youtuber. There is a resource you can use to find top Japanese players, though many don’t play anymore. I think it’s good to look at top teams and tournaments and try to find whoever plays or even flexes to your weapon.
Just putting my 2 cents here but ever since Splatoon 2. I’ve told friends who play somewhat competitively that Splatoon doesn’t have a place that’s easily accessible for anyone to see.
An example I can give is how Smash had GR Smash, if you look at their content they can have over a million views on their Top 10 moments. With how people struggle to get into content because of how stuff like UA-cam Shorts or TikTok works, watching full VODs is not only difficult but just boring to some. Having a highlight reel of the best moments from tournaments and specific weapons would be a good idea for an introduction to these teams and these tournaments. From what I can tell at least no one’s really doing this for splatoon, and it might be a great idea to do this just to introduce people. It might get people sharing those clips and showing it more to casual people.
Although I’m not sure how people feel about their plays being in some “random” UA-cam channel, but it might be something that needs to be dealt with for the time being until it gets more and more traction. But this is just food for thought, nothing really serious of a suggestion.
Hey, I least know who DNAZeke is and who DNA are... because he kicked my fucking head in. I faced DNA Zeke and 4 other top 500 emblem players in X Battles when my power was 19XX... for no justifiable reason. I remember that game vividly, because I never should have been in it. It never should have happened.
It feels weird to see prochara in a squid school thumbnail
Definitely a range of good points covered.
I think your point on forming Melee connections is interesting, as it highlights another element of Splatoon that makes it more difficult to find top players: it's an online game where you can fight other players from your couch without needing to know those people, and uses skill-based matching (to varied degrees). This is almost the opposite of Melee (where you needed to hear about the tourneys somehow, as limited internet back then). And this more organic meeting also allows low-level and high-level players to meet (whether through one approaching the other or having a friend introduce the two of you). Splatoon doesn't need that, beyond arguably the tournament scene (which even then may vary).
this is a great video and i hope it genuinely encourages top level players to put themselves out there more, not only will it help players looking into the competitive scene but it will help the community grow as a whole and get more attention on splatoon.
Another idea for high level to low level contact and improvement would be to take inspiration from GothamChess (weird comparison, I know) with his series titled "How to Lose at Chess", in which he takes games submitted by members of his community and analyses them, then makes a video explaining all the ways the viewer messed up and what they could improve on. I feel as if there's untapped potential for something similar in Splatoon.
Thanks!
I think part of the disconnect between mid to low level teams and top teams is that there’s not a lot of opportunity to self expression at top level right now. Where in melee or ultimate you can pretty easily identify how different players have different styles and archetypes that are exciting to see go against each other and guess which style will win. At top level you can only really identify a team based on minor deviations from the meta in their weapon comp. I know Robbe and tomadachi because one player sometimes plays ink brush once in a while, I know last resort because of a cool double splatana comp that other teams don’t have. The issue is is that those deviations haven’t led them to a lot of success until new meta, so it just feels like deviating from the meta is just suboptimal right now and it’s not as rewarding to look for subtle differences in strategy.
this. Very much what you've said here is what is currently WRONG with all the Comp scene lately. Not enough for people to look at the wall of names and go 'oh hey, I know them' without personally knowing the person to a high degree. What is lost is just how easily everyone 'blends in' because of current Meta. Individuality is lost because while it is a Team Game, the Meta makes it even harder to break free and become recognizable.
yeah, i cant recognize one team from the other one because they all fucking play double splash - double machine. no identity at all.
This attitude of "high level meta play is samey and boring" is part of the problem too. If you're seeing similar strategies win tournament matches, why aren't you adopting those strategies for yourself? It just sounds like a refusal to learn from my perspective.
@@MrCactuar13 Because I like having fun and copying others without problem solving for yourself isn’t fun -_-
@@drageoksllechtim2078 that's why I said adopt and not copy, you observe and learn the strategies that are known to work and incorporate them into your own play style
Dapple Productions has just started doing this, but previously there were ZERO sets posted ANYWHERE. With badly promoted streams and very few places to watch competitors outside of them, no one knows anything about most Div X-level teams, and god forbid and d1 teams. We need sets to get spammed everywhere before anyone can even get a grasp of understanding about the scene. Also, me need more sites that do what sendou doesn’t.
And sets should get posted with replay codes so people can actually watch a specific pov
Another part of it is that splatoon has no consistent schedule at top level. If you want to keep up with OWL, you just hop on UA-cam at the same time every week. If you want to watch Sayonara, you just have to hope they’re playing whatever tourney happens this week.
I think a big part of the problem with finding individual players compared to the Smash scene is just the nature of the games themselves. Smash is a 1v1 game with low camera movement and a stationary UI, so it's a simple task to keep the players' tags and facecam on the screen at all times. In comparison, Splatoon is a 4v4 game, with often very chaotic camera movement, where the player and even team whose POV you're watching switches every few seconds, all of the players aren't always on screen, and half the time you're not even sure which player you're watching because their tag doesn't show up in their POV. It wouldn't be impossible to have a display of all the players on each team and what weapon they're playing, but it is a significantly more difficult task, especially since not even the casters know for sure what weapon the players are picking before the match starts.
Good luck growing the scene my friend. There's a lot of elbow grease and extroversion needed to grow a community, so all you people who can go out and make things happen
So... I would like to add that a good idea is to start you introduction to the comp scene players and teams by searching your country or language comp organization, sure, not every country or place has it, but in my case as a Spanish player, being inside the spanish community was incredibly helpful to learn more about players and teams, and to look for advise in them for my weapon, playstyle or comp.
Thanks to being inside the spanish community, I now know players like Daro, Koma, Carlox, Orion, Yokaru, Ayoaro, etc... All great players that are the top of Spain, but I now also know less international players that are still better than me and that can help me to understand the game better, like Dani, a div4-3 tetras player that is helping me to understand better how QR comps work, and my role in those teams as a stamper player.
If you find a small, comfortable, and friendly community, with a good level (or at least better than you), you will eventually know other players that are friends with those inside the community, that's how I got to know Kip, a stamper player in the UK, he may not be a top player, being around div4-3, but that's still better than me and can help me understand the weapon more than I know.
As someone newer to splatoon i mostly want to learn and improve (this channel has been helpful for that) and also just like watching high skilled players play the game. I've not gotten that into watching tournaments yet so i'm unfamiliar with names of top players which doesn't help but either youtube is terrible at recommending them or a lot of comp players just don't make regular videos because while i could look harder chara, dude and kiver are the only people i've found who regularly upload
Why is nobody talking about prochaira??
This is a disgrace...
@@JelonzoBestJebby ProChaira even used a Chair as a weapon by messing with Charas headphones. Hes too powerful
I’ve since retired but back when I was an avid comp player in s2, I looked up to Power so much as a charger player, ever since I found out about him and I even got the privilege to get his input; he’s kinda like thee charger player you think of but there’s plenty of other amazing charger players like Liotos (my homie lmao), skrub, marsel, bandit, q, latias, Brian, and just so many more talented players- I also find it difficult for people that aren’t familiar with comp to find chargers players since ballpoint is kinda taking up a lot of backline space right now, so just keep an eye out for the amazing chargers of the community as well as the plethora of other talent!
Oh yes; excellent video as always gem keep up the great work and interesting perspectives we haven’t thought of !
I love undertime chara
Wonderful sentiment, Gem! Love your insights into what makes a competitive scene stronger
In Splatoon 2 I remember there was a smaller tournament that did interviews, and the interviews were really interesting to hear. They weren't always the players (although sometimes they were) but someone who was also in competitive who watched the game. It's honestly something I hope happens more and at bigger tournaments.
its because the casual players dont want to watch 2x crab 2x machine
Not everyone who plays this game and follows you is trying to get into competitive. I’m pretty sure most people here just want some good Splatoon tips and general opinions on the game. The western Splatoon content creator community is quite small so it really is just channels like yours, ProChara, Dude, and more people come to to hear about the game. Being pro players helps, but I don’t need someone to be a pro player to respect their opinions on stuff.
Like as a tri stringer main, I could track down the greatest tri stringer main in the west for tips… or I could just sub to NBound and get some good ideas there on how to one shot more consistently or when to effectively use my toxic mist. I don’t really feel the need to track down the best of the best because I’m not interested at ever playing at that level. And I don’t think most people who play this game are. Hell, isn’t it only like 1% of the playerbase that even has X rank? I still don’t.
I'd also like to mention that a lot of people do prefer single player PoVs when trying to learn. If you want to learn how to play the game with a specific weapon, as a single player, it's just a lot more helpful.
Come to think of it, yeah
If tournaments could have replay codes for every match after the set ended or something, that would be cool
The problem about that is that replays tend to disappear. Which sucks to people who want to see it a bit too late
@@starlightrai what they could do is just give the replay codes, then if someone wants to save it at least they can do that, or maybe even someone makes a youtube channel that just has PoV replays.
I think many communities would be better with these advice. Another game I really love is Pokken. But that game doesn't even have casual content creator. If you look now through twitch for vods, you can find ONE vod for a tournament and that was Top 4 only, the rest was not streamed. Only a few others streamed their perspective in an online tournament, but thats of course not the same as having someone to commentate and jump between matches if someone has to wait for the bracket to advance.
Some of the biggest tournaments of the scene are actually side events that get carried by the name of an actual big event, but since pokken is only a side event, there is no stream to watch.
Another reason that we know so little about the competitive players could be that in a comp theirs only 1 star. For example, in Ydill 2 Prochara and Kyo where respectively in teams naming "Last resort" and "NFT", but I barely know who the other players are in that team.
Maybe it's just me being hyped seeing them, in wich case this comment did lose you 2 min of you're time
What would be really cool but cumbersome is if the replays were able to be accessible outside of the game, like a video that has all 8 perspectives or if the switch app had the same functionality + a sort of filter for replays.
I also think the way splatoon is livestreamed is a problem I want to watch streams but I keep missing them because there isnt any accounts that notify about competitions before it happens
This is a great video. I feel like one of the issues is that splatoon is a team-based game, so it’s tougher to remember individuals, but potentially easier to remember teams. The double issue with that is top level teams don’t really have unique identities from an outsider’s perspective, especially with the double splash meta currently. Why should I invest in learning top level teams when they all have the same weapon comps?
Honestly, prochara is here yes but ngl almost everyone mentioned that prochara main stamper so they watch him for it, there is not a lot of stamper mains (excpet spore)
paused at 3:06 just to name this list of some of my favorite players... mostly from splat 2s hayday, some of them still play lol. pain from ink delta, pixel, mullin and lux from komodo, koutetsu, arashi (arashis hammer was awesome back in the day) and chara from prophesy. sun, bagel and .q from saynara. atomic from polar night. there are several more that i know but heres a short list of my favorite charger players cuz i wanna. power, latias, brian the drummer, 10sion, ice, thebarry.
Shame I didn't catch that short, because I've actually been getting into Volty's carbon deco gameplay a lot- and I found them through Chara, too!
He mentioned them quickly in a tier list video as the top player, so I went out to search them and their content, and am trying to learn from them. Though I'll admit I haven't had an easy time finding anyone else that plays carbon deco.
How are we supposed to see people that don't present themselves on youtube?
Great video. I'm constantly trying to find small streams or vods of players who use the weapons I like, and you definitely have to unearth it! I hope for more comprehensive data, analysis, map strategy, and write ups in general
a lot of my absolute favorite players don’t seem to be doing much now which makes me sad, but kaji was always and still is my fav player cause she helped me reach x rank in splat2 and made heavy my best weapon. i also really look up to latias, ice, brian, and grey cause he was one of the best communicators and calm leader-like figures i had ever heard. seriously he felt like the glue of kraken paradise. when i listened to him in comparison to someone like sorin i was like wow… this dude is the antidote to tilt 🤣
also idk if you’ve heard of prochara, he’s p good