Ok, so I didn't want to weigh in too heavily before I tried this thing for myself, but of course, everybody was right. It's awful.
The main things that are horribly wrong:
- You can't communicate with this app at all, until your friends accept your invite and join your room. The App has access to your Switch friends list, but you can't use it to send simple messages?
- Once you're all in a room, that's just the start. If you get split in to different teams, or somebody minimises the app, or enters another app? You can't communicate with this app at all until they return.
It's frankly bizarre that Nintendo thought it would be acceptable to kill communication when phones go in to a low power state, or when users visit another app. The app itself ALLOWS you to share your invite via Facebook and Twitter - which is a great idea - it could be the perfect LFG-type system.. but sharing on social media? It takes you out of the damn app..... which kills communication! Did they
test this at all?
I have found, that on OnePlus phones at least, you can still use WhatsApp if you use the notification bar's quick-functionality to reply to messages - but that still isn't acceptable.
After my first few attempts of using the app, waiting for players, and not being able to coordinate how we joined, and not being able to plan our play sessions - we all quickly agreed that Discord would be better, or just silently joining one another in one of the normal Splatoon play modes. That's a horrific conclusion to come to. "Let's just give up".
So the first step to making this better is putting voice chat on a background processing thread so communication doesn't die in a ditch the moment you start using this thing.
I have a few other ideas for improvement (which I have already sent to Nintendo using the feedback function as outlined in the OP) - but I wanted to share them here to maybe prompt further discussion or any other ideas.
I know the overriding emotion is - "Why can't Nintendo just do a normal online system on the console itself" - and I agree, but if they have to go this route, this is what I would suggest.
Add a whole lot more to the App
- I should be able to message my friends. Period. We've already had to jump through hoops, we've added each other by being friends through other games, or friends on 3DS and Wii U, and friend codes are back (for some reason) - so just let us message each other!
- Sharing your room with Facebook or Twitter is cool, but I should be able to let my friends on Switch know that I'm looking for players too. They could show this as a notification on Switch and/or in the app, and it would be a simple QOL improvement to what they're doing so far.
- I think it would be nice to be able to access my Nintendo Switch screen captures album via my Smart Device. It would encourage use of the capture function during online games, and we would be able to share those moments with friends - be it in the app, or on other services.
- I should be able to schedule games with friends using some sort of calendar, and everyone who accepts should get a reminder shortly before the game is due to start.
- I should be able to chat with friends whether I'm in a game or not. Like I can on other systems. That means Party Chat. I can't think of any infrastructural reason this couldn't happen. It would basically be inviting friends to a chat session that is global and super-cedes any chat rooms that individual games create themselves. The system and its API could pass along the party ID so that games could choose whether to group players by party, or to start a more game-specialised chat room with the same players in it once they all start a game together. An OS update and a few game patches would fix it. Nintendo just need the WILL to implement this, or something like it.
- When I'm in a game with other friends, I shouldn't be cut off from speaking to them until the game ends. There should be a simple switch that allows me to change the target of my voice messages if I am in a group. At the very least I should be able to text message them.
- There is no reason, aside from audio feedback issues, that the client systems and their games could not subscribe to the same voice chat channels and have the audio come out of the TV or headphones. This would, in fact, help with people who like to online stream their games - and allow other people in the room to hear what's going on.
If you're wondering how the above would look, I'm thinking of something like this: