Skill Development in Competitive Splatoon and the "Skill Trap" Phenomenon | Discussion

[@ProChara]

I like the point of tourneys being proven of progress you made rather then being the progress. Nice discussion.

[@MCpuppyhammer]

The US doesn't run squeezer because we don't have a legitimate healthcare system to treat the tendinitis you get from using it

[@meta4240]

Got a chuckle out of me Nice one

[@mysryuza]

Yet they use brushes?? 😭

[@Coach_Ren]

Solid video, Pika. I especially liked your diagram on plateaus/roadblocks, you described it expertly I also appreciate the criticism as well. I think you're 100% right in the sense that my dismissive attitude was really iffy especially given my potential influence There were a few things I conveyed extremely poorly, like "asking questions," in my follow-up reply I meant to outside sources, sparking discussion, asking other players. Not to make your review solely introspective Your take on the Jackpot bounty is also completely valid. My idea is that for the top player it can very easily reinforce bad habits. It's very difficult to stay disciplined as well when the skill gap is that heavy. For the weaker team, not always, the skill gap can be so massive that it results in just permanently being on the defensive. I'm generally of the mind that the sweet spot is a team a bit better than you, to where you actually have the opportunity to take a game here and there, you get to play offensively, but ultimately are challenged pretty hard. Those are the games you can look back on and learn a lot from, which is the kind of games you can have those epiphany moments with looking back on, which was the case in Gell's example translation But in an instance like fighting your pickup, I genuinely don't know why we didn't take your offer, and we were totally in the wrong there. I've been pretty inflammatory the past couple days intentionally, though in this instance it was in poor taste, looking back. My core point is that the overwhelming majority doesn't even bother to improve themselves, which I find to be the bare minimum if you actually want to get better. My frustration comes from a near total lack of accountability, that idea that people think they'll learn off of osmosis or something if only SOMEONE would make a "resource" for them, when the community has put out 1,000s of hours of said content, even if we ignore player vods. We also get sendouq, and the overwhelming sentiment is that people don't queue to improve but rather for the pretty medal. +2/3? I don't need to say more about that. From my perspective the very bottom level baseline thing you can do to show that you care is to sit down and watch a top vod and compare it to your own gameplay. It's dense, boring, and it forces you to think critically. But as you said, it'll only get you to a certain point. The idea I'm trying to convey is that it starts with your willingness to take steps yourselves, rather than blame others or the community in general for not helping you (they are) be better. In the same replies I had people saying they won't ever use twitch as a resource because they get ads, and it's stuff like that I see and I'm like "how serious can I take you when you complain about a lack of resources if this is your first and ONLY response to me?" Again, I mostly agree with everything you touch on here. Great video

[@pikadaveVODs-fx9eh]

I appreciate you elaborating on all of this! I also hope my criticism didn't come across as beefy or disrespectful, I know that you know your stuff. I agree that an inflammatory tone isn't a great way to go about more serious things like this though, especially when people are genuinely trying to learn. (I'm also biased for Correian as he is a homie and I know he wants to actually get good. I must've missed the comments of people being too lazy to watch VODs but I believe you on that lmao) I also agree with you on there being big differences in how fighting teams just "better than you" and fighting truly top teams feels and teaches different things. I could've been clearer on stressing how I think having both types of experiences somewhat reliably is what's best. Demanding that top teams go out of their way to constantly fight teams worse than them because it's helpful is certainly disrespectful of their time and also isn't reasonable, though our current position at the other end of that extreme where top players feel like they're on their own private island is also too much - right now it feels like a Christmas miracle to see top names enter into a more general event. I think I really am just a boomer who misses regular open majors lol. It's also a two way street where when open events do exist and high/top level teams show up that players under "that level" shouldn't shy away from the opportunity. If anything having the security that lower level designated events will always exist means that the purpose and appeal behind entering open tourneys as a newer player should be getting that experience of feeling and learning from the skill gap. I don't think any one party is entirely at fault for how the culture of the scene currently is, but I think everyone can help improve it.

[@Coach_Ren]

@@pikadaveVODs-fx9eh it absolutely did not come off negatively to me. I very much appreciate it and am grateful to have people like you willing to keep me in check Also i totally vibe w you on the tournament thing. I miss when top teams or even just pickups of top players would enter in weeklies. You're totally spot on in that regard, and i think a large incentive to complete IS the opportunity to have those wipeout games that you can look back on, rather than relying on reaching out for scrims and getting rejected/ghosted bc of peoples' limited practice time, or accidentally running into a top team in sq bc someone is getting boosted lol. It's absolutely a two-way street there and I'm not sure how to address that without hosting majors myself lol

[@Bobbela_Brella]

Really good discussion, always love seeing your takes on this! As someone who has always followed weapon 1 tricks, watching vods is never enough. Asking questions, exchanging resources, contacting top players of said weapon, discussing matchups etc all of this is not seen in VODs and those resources sometimes are not available anywhere with ease of acess, so it was up to me to ask top brella players, and up to them to have the kindness to help me. Encouraging this type of interaction between weapon specialists and players interested in the weapon, would lead to so much more diversity and general improvement in the base level of the scene.

[@GUSplatoon]

I gotta say Pika, I really appreciate what you say about putting individual effort AND saying we have not done enough to collaborate. I don’t think I would have reached the heights of where I’ve been without guidance from players as yourself. From simple conversations that I had with you to working with you on two Slosher guides, I learned a lot. It helped me build a fundamental foundation on how to think about the game & I took it from there. Just know, you’re doing your part.

[@icarlygod]

I'm really happy this is said. Part of the reason why I quit comp was that resources were being gatekept from people of +3 skill level not only from needing results but also widely recognized for having skill (so you don't get mistaken as some no-name div 5 player who wants to hang out with top players) and social networks (which I didn't really have because I used to be extremely reserved when meeting new people and I felt guilty when I did use the few connections I had to get suggested.) I think I was skilled enough to deserve to be in plus, (or at least I thought I had enough flexibility and skill to be of value to the server), but because I wasn't well-known or had the most extensive list of results, I only ever got rejected. Since then, I've recently started to coach lower-level teams and have noticed the same things when it comes to improvement and getting stuck in ideas and concepts. Personally, I've always thought of it in terms of art; where more refined understandings of strategic/tactical concepts allow for higher quality output in the craft, and "getting stuck" is just lacking the fundamental understanding of finer details in certain situations. The tree still works, I'm more just fascinated at the difference in perspective we had on the same ideas more or less.

[@Reborn_NA]

Appreciate the perspective, and really great explanation as well!

[@sinbad4435]

I can attest to this in sendouq people really try to win more points than care about improving there overall skill

[@punch7793]

I like your analogy but it's a little incomplete in my opinion but it had to be simplified for people to understand or even to explain well, I'd like to discuss this thing with you or other people because there is so much to talk about. It's a very complicated topic and is important that we understand the problem fully and see what the solutions could be. From my experience (you probably recognize me demoloshing weeklies lately and placing well in some majors), even me being on a top 5 eu team other teams/players (I won't call out anyone specifically) still refuse to scrim us even when we have somewhat proven ourselves, it often feels like many top level players are complaining about the problems that they created themselves not seeming to try to change it, now there are some people that are now trying to do so like obito has started to make content and some others have done or are planning on doing so as well I'm sure, but we aren't fixing the problem by it's root. The problem about teams not wanting to scrim lower teams is a tough one, people often don't want to scrim lower teams since it doesn't feel like practice, the teams can be lower than them but just good enough so that it still feels like they need to try to win instead of playing on autopilot or starting to pick meme comps, but the skill gabs between players have only rison since the lack of practice has lead to more people leaving the top scene compared to how many are entering while our scene overall has been growing. I also want to talk about the improvement structure you presented with the skill caps and such but I think this comment is already long enough... Thanks either way for making this video and shedding some light to the situation!

[@xana3961]

Honestly, it felt like there's more resources for Salmon Run in terms of the "why" people do what they do than competitive.

[@mourning_sun_]

More conversations/resources on building awareness, and being able to understand any given moment’s game state (all the variables of the game interacting with each other), in combination with the importance of a high refresh rate in reassessing said game state, and what should be prioritized would go a long way in improvement for average players. Ofc that is amorphous and complex, but… still very engaging and interesting to try and understand!

[@Evixyn]

From my take away from this whole video is this. I had been playing since Wii U and competitive on the tail end of Wii U I remember my first competitive team was L.O.S. inklings. I was a TTek / Custom e-liter main for that team. Looking back at the videos "I was awful" I clutch on the QR / Sub weapon build when I played TTek. I slowly improve over time and during that era of Splatoon Wii U that is when teams would just love to scrimmage with anyone and everyone just to get practice as it did not matter the skill level of the team as it was a win for both parties. The higher level team got to practice their new strategies and set ups all while the lower level team was able to get rolled and have a heavy analyse critique on what they did wrong and correct themselves and try learn from that and said teams will try again a week or two later and see the improvement the lower level team had did and eventually became scrimmage groups. That all changed when Splatoon two came along as most top / high level teams became too arrogant and self absorbed and only cared about the fame. During the launch of Splatoon two I joined a team with Rin "in this video" we played on that team for a few months before we left as our team leader at the time was just awful and we had no official guidance on that team so we left and performed our own paths. During the my time with competitive Splatoon two early on, I noticed that many of the top level recourses was always kept the higher level players and I would have to go to competitive Chinese / Japanese discord servers just so I could play and learn the game better and many of the players did not us Voice Chat and would message many bullets points on what mode level and weapon does what and which. I tried applying to good teams during Splatoon two and was turned down due to my poor English or lack of voice chat. I join a high level Splatoon two competitive team called Omega / Alpha ink we was training for the Nintendo open until a fight between the two teams occured and the Omega captain left and the two teams merged into one and cut four players from the Omega team and kept the two best for subs for the alpha team. "I was one of the cut" despite I was good "I do believe" my lack of communication was one of the main reasons why I was let go of the team and since then I never bother to learn competitive Splatoon again. Splatoon Three, after main FLC videos later and grinding X Rank in two I believe I was ok in Splatoon three. At launch of Splatoon three I was able to just launch my way up in S+50 Ranks will little to no effort. Then I just stopped playing for nine months after the first season as the game felt more or less the same as two. I came back to January 2024 season and played the last week of January and last two weeks of February cap off at 2467 or something as such and took another season break and now I am playing X Rank again for this final season and everything I had been practicing "self experience mind you" is that cap I felt all the way back in February this year. My limit, was just me using Hero shooter and just focus on playing passive and take on challenges that I know I could win "still sometimes end up loosing, ha ha" I would just play it safe and paint and farm as main Tri Zookas as I could and spam suction bombs until I eventually win. The things I would heavily focus on was my aim with the weapon and special itself where I could win better skirmishes. Even then if I am not in the correct mental I just regress. I noticed I had reached my limited a long time again and it felt that I would just brute forcing way through X Rank and learning the game as a whole. I eventually had to learn "still learning mind you" the new level layout and weapons that the Hero shooter has encountered up close and where these know weapons like to perch up at on all the stages. Yes I know I am not a great player "mid level at best in my opinion" but I do try to learn and improve, however I am too old and I just do not have the time I did a decade ago, ha ha. After this season I am done with the franchise. I do agree that Rin means well but I went through that progress and Japanese and Chinese scene has so many resources that they have in their servers on what weapon a player want to use and what position and neuron each weapon does and a hand full individuals who specialize in said segment that will actually take time to practice with you in text to speech or voice chat. My experience with the West US scene is that everyone is all self center and have the mind set of what Rin said and everything is out there go find it knowing well enough he has the resources that he refuses to give away as he or many of the top player teams in the West "US" find as a potential threat and could challenge and defame them. That is just my two cents and my experience from the competitive scene and this franchise as a whole for nearly decade at this point now.

[@meta4240]

A method of improving that I use but I haven't seen too many others use (tbf I'm not that deep in the community. I usually just stick to my team's server lol) is learning the fundamentals and how to play a weapon that you struggle with fighting. For example; if someone struggles to fight Eliter, they should learn the fundamentals of how to use the weapon and put it into practice themselves by playing it. If you know how a weapon works and how it likes to play, you can more effectively counter it. I guess that kinda fits into the whole "grow your knowledge" thing, but I wanted to mention it due to how effective it can be. Out of curiosity, how do you feel about Decavitator (specifically charcoal)? I've been pushing it while playing for my own team (even though one of my teammates -if you're reading this you know who you are- has been trying to push me to mainly play 52) and I think it has some really good potential. It might not have as high of a skill ceiling as stamper, but I think it's skill ceiling is fundamentally different from stamper due to how it kinda fits more into a wiper/tetras playstyle.

[@brandontait5248]

I really appreciate this video I've been constantly looking on KZbin for videos on how to improve My skill level certain things to focus on and this one video is exactly what I'm looking for

[@ElieDGames]

I love content like this. would love to see more stuff like this on your main

[@nicholas4113]

What would you define as "wrong choices" in the skill timeline diagram you showed?

[@Xneocake]

This was a really interesting video pika! You’ve given me something to mull over and which explains why my play style shift has made me feel much better at the game, gonna show this to my team and see what they think abt it too~

[@tori_emerald]

This was a super helpful video, thank you for making it! I have a question for you as a niche weapon lover: do you think there are any weapons that are forced into an unsurpassable skill cap path? Or is any weapon able to follow the Real Progress skill path, if you're willing to lose some games against players at the same skill level due to weaker tools?

[@pikadaveVODs-fx9eh]

I think niche weapons are moreso restricted by skill consistency in being able to execute them and not that they inherently cap you out. I suppose you could think of it as a struggle to keep gaining elevation as you climb the tree at some point and not actually that you've gone down a bad path necessarily if that makes sense. If anything I think niche/more difficult weapons can't mask issues or gaps of knowledge as easily as other weapons so developing skills with them can actually be more productive/more efficient. It's a similar idea to how Fuzzy talked about harder weapons being ideal for pushing yourself to develop new skills, except in the case of something like stamper it's already been proven that if you can master it you're likely guaranteed strong results too. As I've typed this out I think I realized I've just complicatedly explained skill floors and skill ceilings LOL. Having a high skill floor on a weapon is what can make skill development so efficient since there's so little room for error, but long term only high skill ceiling weapons can continue to climb, at least at a reasonable rate.

[@tori_emerald]

@@pikadaveVODs-fx9eh that makes a lot of sense, thank you!!

[@Agent1o1.]

Oh shit pikas got an alt channel

[@GabeRainery]

Really good info thank youu

[@Quargos]

Fantastic video and discussion. Though I do want to add that though the Branching Strategies view of skills here is a useful mental model; I think it's still an oversimplification. My experiences with growing my artistic skills has me thinking of skill growth a lot less as moving along these paths, and more about growing your own tree of skills and knowledge. (1) Players may grow one branch faster than another because that's where their focus is. For example, a shooter player might focus a lot more on their aim and movement, while a slosher or blaster player might focus more on their positioning and spacing. (2) Or they won't grow an entire branch at all because you don't even realise it's there. For example, new players will almost never discover movement tech like sub-strafing, or ledge-cancels on their own. And broader strategic ideas around things like special advantage, key locations, postitive and negative value trades, may all similarly be difficult to discover on your own. Maybe a player never grows the branch of of the tree that is how to properly play around a certain extreme weapon or strategy. (3a) And often branches will split into multiple, where a foundational skill is needed to understand more nuanced ideas. At the lowest level, this would be things like how to play the objective leading into how to punish people playing the objective, and whether to play the objective or not. (3b) At slightly higher levels, these branches may be things like how "Blaster beats Brella because indirects beat the shield" gives way to a more complex understanding of the little advantage and disadvantage states that form this matchup, and how a misplay from the blaster may let the brella quickly get past the blaster's range for indirects, flipping the matchup on it's head, as the blaster now has to land a difficult direct, in what gap the brella sheild leaves them... And working back from this, how that shapes both the Blaster and Brella's approaches to a possible engagement. Generally, the larger this tree of knowledge and experience, the stronger the player, and the more likely they are to win. But sometimes this really can just play out like Rock Paper Scissors. Especially at lower levels, where a lot of skill development can actually be around understanding the opponents weapons and playstyle, and avoiding mistakes that they're well equipped to punish. Skills like respecting the sightlines of backline weapons; consistently enforcing your zone of control against rat weapons; avoiding creating easy opportunities for ambush weapons like Rollers. I don't really have any big conclusion or anything from this. I just wanted to share this somewhat more nuanced model of skill progression. Maybe understanding this idea of skill growth as primarily being rooted in knowledge growth might help people seek out more useful resources, and get better practice as a result?

[@JoyTheDataScientist]

I'm not sure how much math knowledge you have but you've basically described the problem of mathematical optimization with the branching paths. Good stuff!

[@pikadaveVODs-fx9eh]

I like my numbers but I certainly haven't learned that yet LOL, funny coincidence then

[@JoyTheDataScientist]

@@pikadaveVODs-fx9eh essentially, the idea is that imagine you’re on a landscape and you want to find the highest point. It’s foggy so you can’t see the full landscape, but you do have a tool that tells you your exact height. First inclination is to walk uphill,since that’s guaranteed to lead you to a peak. But is that the largest peak in the landscape? You can never know, but the problem of optimization is detailing how to try and find the highest peak. The branching paths you described is as if the player has reached the peak of their mountain they’re on, and is now afraid to have to go down since every direction means losing height. So you’re a mathematician at heart it seems :P

[@amberzephyr]

i think your idea of skill traps is interesting because it checks out with my experience in other competitive games; i'm lower level in splatoon but like you see typical strategies that low level and mid level players find success in but don't grow out of. and it really makes sense that it applies at the top level too. i think everyone in the community leans on average pretty safe towards the meta. like i feel like i get more negative comments whenever i think of and try off-meta weapons and builds. so i think it would be good to foster a more risk-taking growth mindset in the community. other than that, i believe that coaches, analysts, and theorycrafters are important for the discovery of new knowledge. there's no real place to share that knowledge and discuss though besides youtube and sometimes discord, so everything is fairly isolated commenting on ren's twitter thread, i don't exactly agree with the overall stance because it's a very individual-oriented mindset, but what we really need is better resources and sharing of knowledge. this is what i don't like about competitive communities, that rise and grind (and elitist) mindset that is prioritized over actual community growth. like, something more established like music or art, there are a ton of resources out there. i don't really have to worry about reinventing the wheel or rediscovering the fundamentals i have to learn. i still have to put in the work, but it's facilitated by the abundance of resources. and i don't waste as much time lol, some things are easier to figure out for some people while it's harder for others. tldr; i do agree that it's very insightful and necessary to put in your own work and analysis, but it doesn't have to be this much work lol. it's like telling someone with no knowledge of art or music to study art and music through songs and art pieces and to just put in a lot of work. my partner is a top 500 ttek vshot and a good chunk of my improvement just came from the theoretical advice from them. and it was much faster than improving on your own. because i've literally done what ren said, in other games. it takes a LOT more work to understand and play a game at higher levels, by yourself (mostly). and i think it's wrong to put all the responsibility on the individual, at least if you want your community's average skill to be better. plus, it's easy to hit barriers and those skill traps like you mentioned. maybe they'll give up, or maybe they'll get stuck doing certain strategies and stay at a certain level. edit: also thinking about your idea of skill branches, i think that's another reason why it's really important to share knowledge (while not ignoring innovation). because in fighting games, i've taken a path somewhat different from the typical, because that's how i had to distinguish myself as a player. so sometimes, i feel great when i know i'm really messing with the opponent's head because i understand something they don't. but other times, especially with high and top level players, i find myself in the other position, where i don't understand what they're doing but i can see it happen. like the fundamentals we understand are a little different (oh and different archetypes 100% have different fundamentals aside from the basics so there's that too). anyway, it would help if we could share all that and gain a greater understanding of the game and thus help our overall improvement. because there is probably still value in the knowledge found in "dead end" paths. i guess this is where our viewpoints differ, because i don't necessarily see the paths as mutually exclusive (although certain sets of skills do tend to group up together and go in the opposite direction of other skill sets, i believe you could probably still mix both)

[@giossjbgoku7499]

Pika this video honestly has been very useful i enjoyed listening to you and I agree what you were talking about I’m going to do my best to improve in the game. Shoutouts to you Pikadave my goat:3💙💙

[@theghostcreator776]

One thing to note is that these branches exist in the first place bc so few players are learning from the top teams so they're left to figure things out on their own, creating playstyles that have a ceiling to begin with and forcing the people that come after to follow their path to beat them. Its important to note this to emphasize that these branches aren't natural but rather were created as a side effect of the current systems that the community has in place. It's not inherent to the process so it is possible with a lot of work to take steps to trim off the branches.

[@mars_sp4870]

i really like the model you used to represent the non-linearity of improving. when i thought about it i realised a lot of my own improvement has been going backward and trying to implement ideas from better players and tweaking where it works and where it doesnt, even just subconciously

[@joshk147]

I'd love to see more discussion vids from you in the future! This was super entertaining.

[@kitkat9716]

very good explanation of all the components and depth from the discussion. great video