art credit: thyme
a guide to improving at splatoon, beyond raw mechanical ability by zyf (twitter: @zyfetc, discord: @zyf_) last updated January 16, 2024
As far as I can tell, most educational guide content for Splatoon falls under one of three categories: tips and tricks, tier lists, and in some cases, discussions of specific topics (such as weapons, maps, modes, etc.). However, I haven’t felt like I’ve found any satisfying guide or series of guides that builds a narrative that can take you from knowing very little about the game beyond play experience all the way to a high-level competitive understanding of how to win. The first goal of this doc series is to fix that: to start with very little assumptions about what you know about this game, and put you on a path to growing and getting better as a player.
With that said, I think you’ll find that this doc series is very different than much of the other guide content you’ve seen before. Very rarely in this doc series will I give specific advice about what to do in specific situations or with your specific weapon, and that’s for two reasons. Firstly, you can get plenty of that in other places. Secondly, that’s simply not the point of this resource, because I think most people are not equipped to use that kind of advice responsibly.
What I mean by that is this: Splatoon is a complicated game. There’s 4 people on each team, tons of different weapons and maps, and all kinds of crazy situations you can get yourself into. The reality is that no single useful piece of advice that anyone gives is going to apply in every situation. Even in this very document, I will very frequently make simplifying assumptions. What this means is that if you truly want to get better, you HAVE to be able to think for yourself — to think critically about the advice people give you, and the ideas you come up with, and to meaningfully learn from your own experiences and observations. Without that fundamental skill, I’ve unfortunately watched Splatoon advice — both from me and others — get misinterpreted and misused time and time again.
Instead, the second and ultimate goal of this doc series is to give you a real, concrete framework to be able to think critically and learn how this game works for yourself. Whether you’re a relatively new player interested in getting to or climbing higher in X rank, or someone who’s played competitive at a high level for a long time, I hope you’ll find it useful, or at the very least, I hope it’ll put into words some things that you’ve experienced but haven’t been able to explain well.
[Also, my DMs on both twitter and discord are open (see above for handles) — please feel free to provide any feedback or ask any clarifying questions!]
The ultimate goal of this doc series is to give anyone with a baseline-level competency at playing this game (~S rank is probably a good baseline) the tools to learn, on their own, how to “play smart.”
You might ask—what does that even mean?
I think the level at which this is most misunderstood is at the tactical level. To give a sense of what I mean by “tactical,” I’d like to frame the discussion as follows:
Thus, tactical decision-making sits at a level above what you’re thinking about at a split-second level, but below the level of things like gear and weapon/composition choices. It’s short-term goal-setting that helps you flow through the match and make individual plays.
Before we begin, notice that my goal is not, fundamentally, to tell you what the correct way to play is. I don’t really know that. I can only describe the PROCESS by which you learn to play more correctly than before, which I do think I have a good handle on.
With that ultimate goal in mind, in my mind, there’s really 3 main pillars that are needed to understand how you learn to think more effectively during a match.