• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Splatoon: new info from Famitsu magazine (Hero Mode, multiplayer and more)

L~A

Member
There's a 10 pages articles about Splatoon in this week's Famitsu, including an interview with Hisashi Nogami (Producer), Yusuke Amano and Tsubasa Sakaguchi (Directors). Some details have already leaked, and we have some more info about Hero Mode, online mode and more.

MOD POWER ABUSE

Going through the scans now for any interesting information.

-The interview is with producer Hisashi Nogami, who is known as the director of every Animal Crossing up to City Folk, and directors Yusuke Amano, who also directed NSMB2, and Tsubasa Sakaguchi, who was a character designer on Twilight Princess and art director on Nintendo Land.
-The Inkling city (where the plaza is) is known as 'Highcolor/Haikara City' in Japanese.
-The concept of two teams of four shooting ink in a turf battle has been there since the original prototype, even though the characters where tofu-like blocks at the time.
-They experimented with other team sizes, but found with more than four players felt like they had little effect on battles, and with less than four that they had too much responsibility.
-Killing/attacking opponents online to prevent them from painting ink is just one strategy to win. You get no points or advantage directly from doing so.
-Hero mode uses basically the same controls as online matches, so anyone with difficulty in the can use the hero mode to practice.
-Ideally, you'll be matched with players of a similar rank to you (based off of experience points earned in matches). If not enough players, they'll put you with people further away from your rank. If there's only 8 players, you'll be matched together.
-While online is focused on just painting the ground, hero mode focuses on using the ink to move forward.
-Amano says he wants you to be able to look at the map on the GamePad and see where needs to be worked on for your team.
-No way to directly communicate with people you've been randomly matched with. They will appear post-match in your Plaza, where you can check out their gear, weapons, and comment.
-They picked squids because they were the best at representing the gameplay present in the prototype.
-Music for stages is random. Possible that I'm misunderstanding, but each player will have a different song while playing.
-Music is designed to be the sort that would be popular with the young Inklings involved with the turf battles.
-Rather than making some huge number of stages, they want to create stages that feel different when you use different weapon combinations.
-You don't earn money for gear in single player for balance reasons. Someone could grind money in hero mode and have their first online match with high level gear.
-In the final stages of development now.
-Aiming for, more or less, a simultaneous worldwide release.
-They plan on supporting the title post-release.

EDIT: I think I am done
 

Oregano

Member
Considering matches only start when there's eight players this is either going to have a long life or die immediately. I'm not sure it's a good idea.
 

elyetis

Member
Big expectation for the title.

Yet I do have to say that nintendo politics about ( lack of ) ingame voice chat is still incomprehensible to me. Put it off by default, make it blocked by parental control, but please, put it in yout games.
 

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
-Game won't use CPU fighters; only once 8 human players have been found will a match start

It'll be a fun month or so with the game and then death I guess.
 

L~A

Member
Considering matches only start when there's eight players this is either going to have a long life or die immediately. I'm not sure it's a good idea.

Yeah, that worries me more than the lack of voice chat.

I thought there'd be additional modes like 1 vs 1?
 
"Random matching is done world wide"

Noooo please give me a regional option or a server browser. D:
Here come the high latency battles. This is really not good.

"No communication with players you are matched with"

I hope that means that amongst friends you can communicate.
 

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
No bots?

Hype deflating...
 

Metal B

Member
My thoughts of the missing in-game communication and map-signals from the other thread:

On second thought and having the gameplay in mind, there is actually no need for a beacon or "come here" signal. There is already a clear "beacon" aka goal visible: The paint on the stage and on the map. If you see a free area or a colored area of your opponent, then you should properly go there. If you notice a place losing your color, you should properly check it out and defend it You also can see, if your teammates are on the way to the area, so you can plan in helping them. All the game needs, is a "Assist me" / "Help me" / "Follow me"-Button and there is no need for more in-game communication in regard of the gameplay. I still hope there is post-game communication in a lobby.
 

Shaanyboi

Banned
-Game won't use CPU fighters; only once 8 human players have been found will a match start

But you can force-start a match if it's taking too long, right? Right?!

-Having multiple modes with random matching would limit the number of players per mode, so all the focus is on the 4 vs. 4 for that
I feel like the thing to do is put everyone in the same 'mode', but at the start of a match, dictate different win conditions/rules

-No communication with players you are matched with

Fucking Nintendo... Not even among friends?

-They didn't think of using Bloopers when they decided on squids (they apparently forgot they existed)
Thank god this isn't another Mario-themed game.
 

NotLiquid

Member
I hope that means that amongst friends you can communicate.

Feels very likely considering Smash 4 and Mario Kart had limited chat. Kind of dumb but the target audience is to be expected.

I wouldn't be surprised if the 8 player thing is eventually patched or whether there is an alternative to it. I'm not too worried since most of Nintendo's online games see a lot of lastability. As said in the other thread as well, the comment on game modes is too vague as to implywhether there are more modes.

I hope the game takes off enough to get more content.
 

Dr. Buni

Member
Hero Mode sounds interesting

Also
No communication with players you are matched with
Yay :) Hopefully it is not even among friends, so people won't bother me to talk during matches.
 

Volotaire

Member
No communication is sadly expected. Hope to see y'all on a Skype chat when this comes out.
Expected, but disappointing for a team/strategy game of this type. As posters have said, I hope you can highlight chat to certain groups of players (friends) at least.
 

Majukun

Member
the no CPU bot thing seems incredibly stupid..the risk is that the game online mode will become useless in record time

the no communication one was expected but still kinda absurd in 2015
 

Dryk

Member
No bots, only starts with 8 players, worldwide matchmaking. Nice to know the online will be DoA in Australia as usual. Though even if it had regions Nintendo likes to match us up with Japanese and Western European players for some fucking reason.
 

Shaanyboi

Banned
I'm starting to get very concerned that Nintendo is going to fuck this up. Their track-record with complete ignorance towards modern expectations for online capabilities make me very uneasy.
 

Exile20

Member
the no CPU bot thing seems incredibly stupid..the risk is that the game online mode will become useless in record time

the no communication one was expected but still kinda absurd in 2015
Well there are still sick people out there I guess. Hopefully there is friends chat.
 

Willxc123

Member
Hero Mode sounds interesting

Also

Yay :) Hopefully it is not even among friends, so people won't bother me to talk during matches.

I understand that you might not like voice chat, but there has never been a game that forces it on you or doesn't allow you to turn it off. Being excited for a lack of a feature seems silly, especially because there are so many people who would like having voice chat in splatoon.
 
Yeah figures Nintendo won't have voice chat, they will probably pull the same bullshit like in smash where you can't even do matchmaking online with friends. If that's the case, I probably won't get this.
 
No voice chat and only one multiplayer game type is disappointing.

Even so, I'm still getting this day one. It still looks amazingly fun.
 

Formless

Member
This is not EAD1 which did Mario Kart online -- EAD2 mostly does Animal Crossing and did Nintendoland/Wii Sports.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
I'm really happy for the local multiplayer mode. This has the potential of being a great party game with a 2 vs. 2 or even a 4 vs. 1. I'm not bothered by the lack of voice chat. The games are 2 or 3 minutes long, you don't have really time for a team strategy and mostly for changing the team strategy on the run. It's mostly about watching the map and making individual decisions. Also it's not about calling someone to help you, as you practically die very quickly and you can respawn near your teammate.

You see on the screen where are your teammates, when one of them is killed, you see in which area your color is expanding and where the others are in the offensive. You have quite a lot of info for your own use right there.
 
The game looks to be lacking in some areas, but there is absolutely no way I'm going to pass on a game that looks this fun and unique.

I wish you could play the online mode offline with bots. I love getting practice in before going online.
 
Just a note that sinobi (where I translated this info from) sometimes words things funny or says things without much context so we're left wondering (for now) exactly what certain things mean or apply to specifically.

I would've liked more game types.

Still buying this game.

To be fair, this is the first game in this (potential) series. It's probably not going to be as fully featured as Mario Kart or Smash.
 
No communication
No bots
Match will only start if party is full of 8 players.


pffffffffffffffffffffffffffff this is going to be a hard sell man that is disappointing :O
 

Vaddon

Member
Hero Mode sounds like exactly what I want, so that's great. I'm a little concerned about no bots though, I've always liked the option of AI characters in multiplayer games, even when they're not necessary. Also, if the game happened to not be a relative success, the online scene might not be that vibrant. Guess we'll see though, there's always some strange, online niche for almost any game.
 

KingSnake

The Birthday Skeleton
The game looks to be lacking in some areas, but there is absolutely no way I'm going to pass on a game that looks this fun and unique.

I wish you could play the online mode offline with bots. I love getting practice in before going online.

I will quote myself from the other thread.

Even the E3/Gamescom demo had a practice stage (the one with balloons) before going into the battle one. I'm sure there will be some practice stages as well in the main game.
 
I see no problem with the 8 players rule, game is going to sell enough units and the target audience knows that this game has a big emphasis on online matches, I don't think you're going to wait.

If there really is going to be a problem they'll patch this.


Biggest + for me is that they wan't to implement local multiplayer, pleeeeeease.
 

Kriken

Member
The whole "requires all 8 players or no match" seems dumb in the long run. Hopefully that can be patched later on. As for communication, I expected as much :/
 

Pie and Beans

Look for me on the local news, I'll be the guy arrested for trying to burn down a Nintendo exec's house.
Also, no communication and then abandoning some system for in-game tactical orders is pretty shitty isn't it?

More games should have MGO2's quick D-pad set voice orders, bam, done. Don't give me any "game was too fast shit", but then they were probably trying to use the gamepad to draw "map annotations" or something convoluted. But then thats even worse isn't it? You could be transmitting "SOS" calls using just a quick poke on the gamepad's map to get your teammates over to specific areas. I seem to remember that idea from a past trailer, or have I imagined it?
 
Top Bottom