09-08-2018, 01:01 PM | #1 |
Naga's Voice
Join Date: Feb 2014
Location: somewhere gay idk
Posts: 3,280
|
Splatoon 2 and Switch Online
So, if you've ventured to /r/splatoon in the past day or so, you've likely seen this post.
The gist of the situation is that a big feature of Nintendo Switch Online subscription was going to be cloud save backups. Recently, Nintendo decided to inform us all that Splatoon 2 would be excluded from that feature. According to them, this is a measure to prevent "save scumming" on gear rolls and the online rank system for modes like Rainmaker, Clam Blitz, etc. If you've read the linked post, you know that people are pissed about this. Horror stories about of people sending their Switches in for minor (or major) repairs, only to find that all their 600+ hours of effort, gameplay, data, unlockables, etc, are all gone with NO method of recovery whatsoever, because their data was wiped as a part of the repair process. While there is homebrew software to create backups, it is still homebrew, which Nintendo famously does not like and constantly fights against like Apple against jailbreaks and emulators. On top of this, NSO isn't going to upgrade online services to running on dedicated servers as opposed to peer to peer connections at all, leading many people to believe that Nintendo is basically just going to start charging for matchmaking. However, the "save scumming" explanation is the main point of ire here. That is because lately, hacking has started to re-emerge in the series with this Splatoon installment. People are hacking gear, rank, league power, and more via save editing, and Nintendo has done very little about it. In fact, the one person bold enough to use Nintendo's turned eye to hack a ranking leaderboard to spell "Please add Anticheat Nintendo" was promptly banned, which, while good in principle, combined with the lack of action towards malicious hacking just ended up looking terrible. The effect is that people find Nintendo's stance here hypocritical. Save scumming your rank via a cloud backup is effectively worse than editing your save to give yourself rank X and a splattershot capable of inking the entire map in one ZR press while you're at it. Save scumming your gear rolls (which already effectively exists with the snail reroll and scrubbing features in the game!) is worse than someone just save editing themselves pure gear in a matter of minutes with not even nominal reliance on RNG. It's to the point that people are planning on boycotting NSO, and admittedly, I'm considering being one of them, because Splatoon 2 is my main online game, and NSO for Splatoon amounts to a 20$ a year nothingburger. Yeah, it's not all that expensive compared to other services, but it will essentially offer me nothing, so why buy it? I could understand a supporting devs angle if Splatoon wasn't being supported just fine with no fees whatsoever. There's also the fact that Nintendo has done nothing to improve their service before or after this service's implementation. They're not going to remove the need to have the right type of Wi-Fi. They're not going to address hacks. So why do they need more money? What are they offering? The ability to continue playing the bulk of the game I paid full price for already? Nuts to that, I'll tend the fire in Breath of the Wild.
__________________
|
09-08-2018, 03:36 PM | #3 | |
Naga's Voice
Join Date: Feb 2014
Location: somewhere gay idk
Posts: 3,280
|
Quote:
Yes, that means there would be an online requirement for any trading and transferring, but it solves the problem thoroughly without screwing someone who sends their switch in for repair over. If you really want to discourage cloning via cloud save scum, make it take an inordinate amount of effort by say, making it so that you can ONLY restore cloud saves to a new(ly formatted) device. Don't know about you, but I wouldn't want to format my entire device just to clone something, much less save scum my snail rerolls in Splatoon.
__________________
|
|
09-08-2018, 06:05 PM | #4 |
Think ye can take me?
Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Probably in the US
Posts: 2,524
|
No cloud saves really isn't a huge deal when the only "content" that one couldn't easily recover in about half a week are sea snails, whereas rank scumming could easily make an already unpopular solo experience feel quite pointless if anyone can just choose not to lose splat power. They should prioritize getting a server infrastructure and ironing out matchmaking before they implement quality of life changes like cloud saves.
Also Nintendo's anti-cheat isn't fantastic but if you try to hack anything more than gear and ticket amounts you will get yourself banned before long
__________________
o O O o TS__[O] {======|_|""T""|_|""r""|_|""a""|_|""i""|_|""n""| /o--000'"`-0-0-'"`-0-0-'"`-0-0-'"`-0-0-'"`-0-0-' Squad Summary |
09-10-2018, 08:23 PM | #5 |
Naga's Voice
Join Date: Feb 2014
Location: somewhere gay idk
Posts: 3,280
|
Counterpoint: Level, to which are tied weapons, story mode unlockables, octo expansion unlockables, and the big one, CHUNKS...There's also the fact that if your cloud save system is that weak to scumming, it's...kind of a bad cloud save system, since the idea is to not "lose" anything. Some degree of updating one's saves when gear slots and rank meters change, to put it simply, there's some finesse that would need to go into it, should easily patch up any savescum issues Nintendo would be worried about.
Dedicated servers would also be nice but at least Ninty isn't trying to feed us bullshit about why they're not doing it.
__________________
|
09-13-2018, 10:34 PM | #6 |
Think ye can take me?
Join Date: Dec 2013
Location: Probably in the US
Posts: 2,524
|
Story took 5 hours to get everything, octo took 8 hours, so 13 hours total for that. All of the weapon classes are unlocked by level 10, with most of the popular variants by 13, which is easily achievable in like 4-5 hours at most. Level 30 is the highest level for weapon unlocks and that still only takes about 15 hours, easily achievable in less than a week. chunnks you only need for gear, and building a piece of competitively viable gear took me about 2 hours of salmon run for the tickets and 40 games of ticket farming, and if we add in the octo rewards that time is shortened down even more. all in all you can recover most of everything you previously had within about 25-30 hours roughly, which is easily achievable in less than a week if you had no responsibilities, and still within 2 week even if you could only play 2 hours a day.
As to whether the cloud system is bad, well nintendo doesn't know yet. They do know, however, that scumming was very prominent in Splat 1 and they didn't want it to happen again. And evidentally since gear scumming was a thing for over a year and is still likely possible, it wasn't an easy patch for Nintendo, which means it might be a weakness with how they set up the server or data or whatever. Of course that means its a bad cloud save, but I would rather if anything, Nintendo implemented a good cloud save later or never as opposed to a bad cloud save now
__________________
o O O o TS__[O] {======|_|""T""|_|""r""|_|""a""|_|""i""|_|""n""| /o--000'"`-0-0-'"`-0-0-'"`-0-0-'"`-0-0-'"`-0-0-' Squad Summary |
09-17-2018, 05:29 PM | #7 |
Volcano Badge
Join Date: Mar 2007
Posts: 2,878
|
I'm actually pretty bummed out by the lack of cloud saves too. I have put in alot of time building a bunch of cute gear sets for my character, and it would really suck if I lost it all. I really do not want to rebuild all of this.
Also it would really be nice if they actually improved Splatoon's online experience. While DCs and lag don't ruin my experience, the frequency still feels unacceptable for something from Nintendo. |
09-17-2018, 05:38 PM | #8 |
Kuno's Wife
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Mineral Town
Posts: 1,091
|
What kinda game with an online mode ties your ranking to a local save rather then a serverside one? *thinks back to PSO in 2000* Okay thats not the most recent example by any means but Nintendo c'mon now this is on you. As is denying people local save backups.
|
Lower Navigation | ||||||
|
Currently Active Users Viewing This Thread: 1 (0 members and 1 guests) | |
|
|