A Game's Depth Shouldn't Scare New or Casual Players

Comments · 147

• MA

  @malcovich_games · 3 years ago

  Fighting games are "hard" and tend to have a high skill ceiling, but Street Fighter 6 proves that complexity is not the main factor that keeps casual players away.

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• DR

  @drageoks · 3 years ago

  I don’t want the old mahi back because I thought it was more competitively viable, I want it back because it was more fun

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• CH

  @christopherpetit1718 · 3 years ago

  As a casual player (roughly 200 hours of play time, mostly Turf War), I love the idea of having more depth to the game.  It seems easy at first, but you quickly realize how very much there is to learn.  And that's worlds better than a game where I play it for 20 hours and I know everything there is to know about it.  The pro Splatoon players such as Gem, Prochara and the likes, through their videos, show how I can improve.  And I've seen their advice improve even my casual play, so I trust their experience.

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• LU

  @LunaDragofelis · 3 years ago

  I just want to be able to play creatively, and even Walleye Warehouse had more routes than the average Splatoon 3 map.

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• CH

  @chamopss · 3 years ago

  As a very low level casual who only ever dabbles in ranked, I can&apos;t stress how important depth and freedom of skill expression is for splatoon. I struggle ever using squid rolls or substrafing or ledge snaps properly, but there&apos;s fun in *trying*. I have the choice to spice up my own gameplay for better results, and it&apos;s rewarding when it works! I don&apos;t have to learn advanced techs because I&apos;m not interested in reaching the skill level where they become necessary. Limiting what comp players can do because of theoretical matchups they shouldn&apos;t even be in is awful and only makes gameplay more stale.<br><br>Restricting map layouts so that &quot;sweaty players can&apos;t flank kids&quot; does nothing but hurt the game. Being locked out in turf war maps like scorch gorge means the only way to push is hope for an unlikely wipe in your spawn or somehow winning fights in mid against more skilled players. Casuals can only run in and hope they win, or stay locked on the plat chucking bombs at each other. There&apos;s no other routes, no stealthing, no hopes of sneakily stealing turf. If you&apos;re pitted against players above your level, losing is not the issue. It&apos;s having nothing to do other than take fights you cannot win. It makes gameplay overall more mind-numbing and frustrating, as the winning team has no need to check flanks or keep tabs on the map. All chokepoints do is stall the pace of matches and being forced to hide until a special is over or a backline looks away. I love splatoon best when it&apos;s fast-paced and chaotic, and maps like mincemeat seem so deadset on having everything be as predictable as possible

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• ST

  @stevieie2837 · 3 years ago

  There are three &quot;main&quot; arguments about the ways Splatoon is beginner-unfriendly, and I feel like the validity of those arguments varies wildly.<br><br>The most valid, I feel, is the argument that Splatoon 3&apos;s customization is too slow to unlock, and punishes beginners during the phase they&apos;re most likely to drop the game. I have 400+ hours in S3 and I STILL don&apos;t have the splashtag titles and banners I want. Some players will literally never unlock the Lucky-Duck banners because their rng seed will require them to put more time into grinding the game than there are hours in the season. Splatoon 3 makes your custom Inkling feel like an uncustomized Loser for way longer than virtually every other shooter on the market. <br><br>The second argument, which is largely not an issue in Splatoon (yet), but still important to acknowledge, is that complex, high-execution mechanics is disability and hardware-restrictive. Many players feel they can&apos;t get into competitive Smash because their controller prevents them from being able to consistently execute techniques that give a tangible advantage. Many casuals worried that this exact thing would be an issue with Squid Rolls because they played Splatoon 2 with drifting joycons that don&apos;t register flicks correctly. <br><br>The third argument, the one that this video addresses, which is most understandable, is that learning Splatoon 3 is slow and its modes are very complex. TF2 can explain its game modes in one splash screen, and its most complex game mode is still less complex than frickin&apos; Rainmaker. I would largely argue that TF2 has about the same level of depth as Splatoon, but it&apos;s more accessible to casual players because it does a better job Explaining itself. I&apos;ve known friends who picked up Splatoon 3 who dropped it before even reaching level 20 because many of the map modes, rulesets, and weapons are just plain BADLY conveyed. I&apos;ve seen commenters in YOUR videos react with comments like &quot;I was today years old when I found out the penalty is half the points you scored&quot;. The learning curve on this game is steep and doesn&apos;t have enough grips, and I don&apos;t think the players making the argument that Nintendo should &quot;reduce the complexity&quot; are complaining about how high the skill ceiling is when they can&apos;t even get off the skill floor.

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• EC

  @EclipseKirby · 3 years ago (edited)

  For some reason, a lot of casual players think fun and competitive play are mutually exclusive. They think anything that makes competitive play better must also make a game less fun. They think playing competitively must come at the sacrifice of fun and those that do play comp do not have fun. I think these are the people insistent that depth shouldn&apos;t be added, as to them, depth means better for comp play, and therefor must mean less fun for everyone else. Gameplay additions that can make a game more fun for everyone AND more competitively deep are inconceivable to them. It&apos;s a strange way to think.

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• MI

  @miimiiandco · 3 years ago

  I think Pokemon is really interesting here, as it&apos;s a super duper deep game, yet it&apos;s a very accessible game - the solo campaign can be breezed through with a basic understanding of type match-ups, and it&apos;s probably a fun casual game with friends. In fact, I see a lot of casual Pokemon players complaining that the game doesn&apos;t have enough depth, that it isn&apos;t difficult enough, that spamming the super effective move will let you breeze through the solo campaign.<br><br>However, the solo campaign, and the competitive scene are two very different things, and the solo campaign doesn&apos;t teach you anything about competitive. That&apos;s the issue there - the fact that the transition between &quot;casual solo play&quot; and &quot;competitive multiplayer&quot; is brutally rough. Scarlet and Violet specifically only has like 6 Double Battles in the entire game - Doubles being the official Competitive format. Depth isn&apos;t the problem, it&apos;s the complete lack of learning tools in-game.<br><br>Bad tutorialization is also a big problem with Xenoblade Chronicles 2, funnily enough.

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• FR

  @fruitjuiice · 3 years ago

  as a casual who struggles with awareness (thanks adhd!) and has poor reflexes… i think depth is really important to keep the game accessible. otherwise it would be down to who can react faster which is a fight i’ll never win

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• AL

  @alyssa_vatalth · 3 years ago

  Apart from the really important life advice you&apos;ve given, this is probably one of the most important videos for just about everyone in gaming to watch

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• AR

  @armoredanteater609 · 3 years ago

  I like how crazy the movement gets at higher levels. Im not there yet, but it makes me excited to know that one day, I could be that good

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• NO

  @No1Guoda1Fan · 3 years ago

  I think the depth people are afraid of are things like Melee&apos;s L-cancelling, fake depth; there&apos;s never a point where you don&apos;t want to L-cancel, and it just serves to widen the skill gap.

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