One of the most controversial things about the recently released Splatoon is it’s map rotation cycle. Instead of functioning similarly to most other online shooter games, were you can choose which maps you want to play, Splatoon has a set two-map rotation that switches every few hours. This is one of the most cited “downsides” of the game, since if you get two maps that you dislike, you’re stuck on them until the maps rotate again in four hours. In a recent interview with Japanese publication Nintendo Dream, developer Yusuke Amano discusses why they chose this form of rotation.
I think if maps were selected at random from all the possibilities, everyone would only use weapons that have “the greatest common divisor” and that work the same way in every map. But when maps are limited to two, you can have alternative weapon choices like “I’ll go with a charger for these two maps”. If there are more than three stages, all-rounder weapons become popular.
It makes sense, considering how frequently players will find a weapon they love and stick with it, no matter the map. That doesn’t necessarily work with Splatoon, as you don’t have a kill and death ratio at the end of the map, but rather a percentage that ranks how well your team did at area control. Aside from that, Amano mentions that a new mode called Tower Control will be added in a future update.
The developers also confirmed that Splatoon development isn’t over, despite the fact that the game has launched.
We wanted to pile up content with updates from the start. We prepared some amount [of content] according to our expectations, but as we saw actual reactions [from players], we’re going to make some revisions.
If you’ve already managed to reach max level in Splatoon’s multiplayer, it sounds like the developers are working on entirely new content that you’ll enjoy soon.
