Splatoon 2 Developers Discuss The Game And Post Release Support

One game that I suspect you are all playing this weekend is the wonderful Splatoon 2 for the Nintendo Switch. Japanese gaming publication Famitsu recently caught up with four of the game’s developers. Those who took part were art director Seita Inoue, lead programmer Shintaro Sato, director Yusuke Amano, and producer Hisashi Nogami. As you would expect it is a lengthy interview but it touches on some interesting subject matters including how the team plan to handle post-launch support. Read on for more:

• The game’s shading mechanism has changed, which allows for increased gear texture quality
• All graphical aspects and programming mechanisms have been built up from scratch for this sequel
• Maximum resolution is 1080p in TV mode
• Abigger focus for Nintendo was the 60 frames per second
• Occasionally the resolution will be scaled down when there is too much ink displaying on the screen
• Nintendo reduced the CPU load and refined the way to use CPU power effectively to maintain 60fps in all matches
• Weapons were tweaked to let players be more creative by thinking about unique weapon characteristics and their best uses
• Weapons are designed to be effective when they are used during the right occasion
• Special weapons are stronger than the original ones when used in the right situation, but weaker otherwise
• The damage and effect of slowing down your movement when you step in the opponent’s ink are reduced from original
• You can jump up in rank if you’re good enough, but only up until S
• You can’t jump up from C, B or A to S+
• When you win battles in Ranked mode, the Ranked meter fills and your rank goes up when it’s fully filled
• When you lose a battle, the gauge does not decrease, but the meter starts to crack
• Once the meter reaches its limit, it breaks
• When the meter breaks, you have to start over again from the beginning or from a lower rank
• Highest rank is still S+, but if you fill up the Ranked meter, you get numbers after the alphabet such as “S+1”, “S+2” and so on
• Maximum number is “S+50”, but this number will not be displayed to your opponent
• You are the only one to see it, and you can check it on your own status screen
• Ranked Power is calculated by an algorithm to measure how strong each player is with minuteness
• This will determine if a player’s rank is worthy of receiving a big jump (like from “C” to “A”)
• Ranked Power has no relation to your splat rate, and is more tied into to how well you lead your team to victory
• You won’t drop off more than one rank even if you play poorly
• Stage rotation time was changed to two hours
• This was done because the devs expected people to play for an hour or so, but they found people play much longer
• With Salmon Run, Nintendo considered how to implement a co-op oriented mode in a player-versus-player type of game
• The devs will monitor how users are playing this mode to see if there’s some tweaks they can throw in
• More Salmon Run maps will be added in the future, but Nintendo wouldn’t comment on adding more enemy types to the mode
• Rewards are changed each time Salmon Run is played
• You can obtain rewards when playing locally, but not gear
• Originally Nintendo had an idea for this mode, but had no background setting, enemy designs, etc.
• Inoue suggested that it should be salmon-themed
• When Nintendo hosted the Splatfest that pit Callie against Marie, the development of Splatoon 2 had started
• The devs had already decided to have the result reflected in the sequel
• They even had an idea to announce the Splatfest with a phrase “Your choice will change the next Splatoon”
• The timing to announce a sequel wasn’t right, so they decided against this
• They eventually released a series of short stories about the Squid Sisters to show how the Splatfest affected the sequel’s story
• Nintendo wouldn’t say if Marina is a Octoling, and noted that Inklings are not paying attention to this too much
• Inklings don’t care about appearances, as long as everyone is doing something fresh
• The Squid Sisters had composers who produced their songs, but Off the Hook are composing their music by themselves
• Pearl is genius artist, but she couldn’t find a right partner because she’s a bit too edgy
• She eventually found Marina as a partner though, and their chemistry is sparkling right now
• Nintendo is planning a year of content updates for Splatoon 2
• When finished, the quantity of stages will be more than the original
• Some of the additional stages are totally new and some will be arranged stages from the first game
• Not all original stages will return and they are choosing stages based on the potential for them to be improved
• Brella is shotgun-esque weapon, so the ink hits your opponent more if you are closer
• It can shield damage when you open it, but the amount of damage has a limit and once it reaches it, it breaks
• You can shoot ink, but you can’t use the shield feature when it breaks
• The shield won’t prevent your allies ink
• There are more new weapon categories which haven’t been revealed yet
• There are no other ranked modes outside of the three current options
• The future holds any sort of possibility, but the devs didn’t get specific about adding more content like that
• For the modes, they adjusted the rule designs so that players will experience the more interesting aspects

Source / Via