basilicon

Do not buy Splatoon 3. I've played a lot of Splatoon 1, and I must say that I am thoroughly shocked that the developers at Nintendo managed to screw up the matchmaking system so horribly. I bought this game at release and it felt pretty balanced; I would win some games and lose some, but it was never terribly unfair. I took a hiatus from the game temporarily due to more pressing concerns in my personal life, and returning to the game has been nothing short of soul-crushing. Every game that I join, I get crushed miserably. I kid you not, no matter what I do, it feels like the enemy team has an infinitely superior advantage to mine. I played 5-6 Turf War matches, and even trying as hard as I possibly could, not a single match were we even close to winning. Alright, I thought, I will just play the ranked mode, Anarchy, where I am at the lowest possible rank, C-, since I have not played in a while. Somehow, this gamemode is even less balanced. Every game is an instant, pathetic defeat, typically lasting <2 minutes for gamemodes like Rainmaker. This is not me being rusty at a high rank; this is me returning to play a game where I am already the LOWEST POSSIBLE RANK. You might assume that being at the lowest possible rank, the matchmaking would put you with players of similar skill, and you would have to struggle to climb up. However, the brilliant minds at Nintendo have managed to devise a matchmaking system where instead of starting at the lowest point, you start at a point where all your opponents will crush over and over until you are so far in the negative that the opponents you have are just as bad as you are. I feel like the point of skill-based games is to feel good about the skills you have, not about how bad the skills of the enemies are. Splatoon 3 doesn't so much lift you up as it lowers the enemy down. Splatoon 3 makes games like Overwatch 2 and League of Legends feel enjoyable.