I have been playing Splatoon 3 on my Nintendo Switch with my girlfriend since the game came out. Splatoon 3 is a third-person shooter multiplayer competitive game developed by Nintendo. It has both a pvp mode, where players team up and battle each other in different forms of matches, and a pve mode where players form a team and play a game called “Salmon Run.”
In Salmon Run, a team of 4 players (assuming that they all have stable enough internet connection to withstand the horrible connectivity issues of the game) have to defend against three waves of attacks by salmon-inspired sea-creatures called Salmonids and try to survive. While the team tries to survive, they also have to collect golden eggs dropped by the bigger boss Salmonids and deposit them in a basket, and a quota has to be fulfilled before time runs out in a wave or the team fails.
Salmon Run is a difficult game mode – the four teammates need to have some sense of coordination, and the Salmonid attacks are relentless, on top of which one also has to gather golden eggs and fulfill a quota. However, in my experience of the game, the “real” difficulty that makes this mode much, much harder than it should be is the ranking system and the negative consequences of affective frustration that comes with it.
The ranking system of Salmon Run in Splatoon is dependent on a system in which a player starts with 40 points and have to reach 99 to progress to the next level. Winning a game nets 20 points, losing in the 3rd and final round does not affect the score, losing in the second round deducts 10 points and losing in the first takes off 20. The game also gets significantly more difficult as a player levels up.
The affective difficulty comes from the frustration of losing a game, which is tied to the ranking system. While some players (like my girlfriend) does not care too much about losing points or failing to rank up, I get absolutely frustrated and sometimes furious if I am on the verge of promotion and lose a game. This frustration also snowballs, which means that it affects my gameplay and my performance in the subsequent round, which negatively impacts my score and rank even more in a downward spiral.
It is interesting to treat this ranking system as constructing a negative influence on player performance through affective difficulty, and examine the ranking system in competitive games in general. It could be argued that this frustration serves as a catalyst for inciting the player to play one round after another when on this kind of losing streak. It also brings up the question of subjectivity and the player having more sense of their agency in a game by failure – in this case, doesn’t the player actually end up having much lesser control over themselves and over their positionality to the game if they are being unconsciously manipulated by the game through affective difficulty? Isn’t it the case that difficulty both gives us illusions of agency and actually takes agency away from us?
Or it could just be that I am really bad at these competitive games and should go back to playing Stardew Valley or Animal Crossing.
I love Splatoon 2 and have slowly but surely been putting more hours into Splatoon 3, and I really agree with your take on the frustrations of the ranking system. The big thing for me is that you are receive points based on your performance in the game, and those points correlate to a milestone progression to unlock items that are only able to be unlocked through and during that “season” of Salmon Run. The higher the rank you have in Salmon Run, the bigger the multiplier that gets applied to the points that you score at the end of a game, so players who have a higher rank and play well will be able to collect the items faster.
Getting the unique items is the biggest draw to the game mode for me, other than wanting to take a break from PvP. I also feel a bit of a time crunch when playing this mode, because I want the most basic version of the unique gear at the very least. I remember getting Splatoon 2 a bit after launch, and being so heartbroken when I saw a piece of Salmon Run gear that I had missed out on but really loved. My frustration with losing rank doesn’t really come from the ranking itself, but how it effects my ability to collect these unique items.
You posit an interesting change to the system – maybe offering a difficulty level that players can join in on, and based on the difficulty level, players earn a point bonus correlating with the difficulty level. For more seasoned players who want to collect gear quickly, maybe taking on a high difficulty setting would be more appealing. If a player is new, or wants to have a less stressful Salmon Run experience, an easier option may be better, though it may not have the same pay out in terms of points.
Either way – Nintendo’s online services suck.