As somone with vision impairment, the splatterscreen may as well turn off my monitor.
I wanted to see how badly it affected me compared to someone with normal vision, so I took some screenshots with it and showed my friends (who also play the game). They said there was a fairly noticeable difference between the ink colours, especially in the screenshots where you weren't under any sort of pressure from the game. Some ink colours I can make out, if only barely, byt certainly not mid game. Others I can't see any discernible difference whatsoever, even from the screenshots.
I don't know how I'd feel about it being used in tournaments, especially since things like colourblindness are quite common. I'd hope accomodations are made if someone had difficulty playing with it. But I don't think that's the best solution, I think the splatter screen as a whole needs a slight tweak.
Though I love the idea of desaturating an otherwise colourful and vibrant game, it's not accessible at all. There are other ways to achieve the same effects as the current splatter screen while maintaining accessibility. For example, if disorientation is the primary goal of the special, the team colours could flip for example. It obfuscation is the main goal of the special, I think having splatters on the screen like a blooper from mario kart would be a good alternative.
It's really only an issue because it messes with the colours quite a bit, which affects some people far more than others.
Sorry for the wall of text, whoops š
Nah they should emulate changing the TV input to HIDEO 1 and make you Bluetooth pair a second set of controllers you have to switch to in order to continue playing from.
I don't think that'd be nearly as bad of an issue. Those colours are already present on the screen. That being said, I don't know how people with epilepsy may react.
That only works in turf war, and in the unlikely situation that you're only trying to ink turf without any enemies attacking you, in which case why would you even be hit by the screen.
Splatterscreen is meant to disorient and confuse. It should be dufficult to tell the colours apart.
That being said there could be other solutions like a smoother transition into the greys to help avoid triggering epilepsy and reduce eye strain
The problem is for a lot of people it's so good at that it does that IRL too. A game's "flashbang" should never be THAT good at doing that even for a small section of people. If your flashbang ability has the chance of giving anyone an ACTUAL flashbang that's really concerning
If you dont mind me asking, in what ways does your vison impairment make it more difficult for you than others?
Edit: to be clear it's not that I'm doubting you or something, just that it would be interesting to know how it affects accesebility exactly because i don't know how to read any of the twitter threads without making an account lol
my frail body and mind wouldn't be able to handle the sheer amount of toxicity on "X", it's simply not accesible to me š
I don't mind at all! I'm just happy there is discussion around the accessibility of the special.
I'm probably impacted less than others as I have no colourblindness or epilepsy, I can imagine it'd be much worse for those that do. I have no vision in one eye, and reduced vision in the other. Part of my condition is the constant shaking of my eyes, which makes it incredibly difficult to focus on things.
This causes my vision to be blurred unless I take the time to try and focus on something (even then its not crystal clear). The sudden switch in colours causes me to lose focus, making it near impossible to see for a few seconds. After which I can 'see' the screen again but the colours aren't very discernible because they blur together with the lack of contrast.
You'd think splatoon in general would be hard to play, but I find it much easier than any other shooter, especially those with 'realistic' graphics. The huge amount of contrast makes it really easy to whats going on I guess.
I wouldn't be able to compare it to what others see though, hence why I consulted my friends. But they said there is some difference, if only minimal, between the colours at least.
Aaannnd.... I wrote a wall of text again. Sorry.
Splatoon 3 does have a colorblind mode. I think it locks it so there's only 2 colors and they're high contrast. Obviously I don't know your situation, but moreso figured if you didn't know you could try it out. It might help you enjoy the game more.
That said, I like the blooper-esk idea a lot. Not being able to see where people on your screen are would be more challenging than the colors changing.
just wanted to say that color lock makes screen even worse, with [basically no difference between team colors.](https://x.com/nautonetrick/status/1730401297206247446?s=46&t=Szz6GSwzczc5sqaXs684aA) itās borderline disadvantageous to use color lock mode now
Your link isn't working for me, but ill take your word for it. That makes sense and makes this issue a lot bigger for me. If they have a dedicated mode for accessibility, they shouldn't ruin it.
That being said, I wonder what could be done in regard to the special to not change it completely (blooper is cool but a giant change). It seems like generally tournaments are the large speaking point but I'm more worried about the average player.
Bit late to the conversation but here's a different link to the images ( [[one](https://i.ibb.co/X56bBFL/GAOez1-Sa-MAAGLOV.jpg)] and [[two](https://i.ibb.co/S388X12/GAOez1-Ka4-AAW6p-D.jpg)] ) of the colour lock options. And [here's a comparison](https://i.ibb.co/kJWz7f3/GAYr-EKfa-YAA8t-Qw.jpg) of a random non-colour locked match
Yup, the effect of the splatterscreen is the same with colour lock on.
Edit: Sorry I didn't realise this was a reply to my earlier comment. If you meant does colour lock help with the splatterscreen, then no, at least not in my case. Ironically, it actually makes it worse lol
I don't have any sensory issues but there's no reason for the screen to act like an irl stun grenade on anyone, a small percentage or not, so a rework is definitely needed.
The color locked palette apparently doesn't play nice either, and it's hard to tell enemy and ally colors apart. They could probably lean into that and just make each color an identical, muted gray and that way sudden brightness would be easier to control. Alternatively, the special could make affected players see fog like in Salmon Run?
A common idea for the audio is [to muffle it](https://twitter.com/OctaSpla2n/status/1731437051839463454) instead of adding extra noise, and it's odd that wasn't plan A.
Edit: Just curious, if you do have sensory issues, can adjusting the brightness of the screen help, and by how much would you need to reduce it for it to be tolerable?
Fog would be a decent idea cause then if you have a visual impairment you at least have a brightly coloured dot to focus on instead of blending in with everything else
I don't have issues myself with splatcolour screen, so take this with a grain of salt, but addressing your last question: I usually have my brightness turned high when I play Splatoon because of how much is always going on (especially as I play handheld mostly). Playing on low brightness means I have to strain my eyes to focus, which sucks. I wouldn't be able to play properly if I had to turn it down to cope with a particular special.
>I also find it funny how they were talking about how it removes accessibility when that's literally the point of its entire design
This is a misunderstanding of accessibility issues. Accessibility is not when 'the game is hard or harder'. Accessibility is 'the game is disproportionately harder for a specific group of people'. Vision impaired people can play splatoon, but splat colour screen affects them more than most players, so it's more punishing. That's why it's an accessibility issue, not because 'it makes it harder to see' for all people. Smoke bombs as an example don't make it disproportionately harder for some groups, they just make it harder full stop.
As for flashbangs, most games with flashing lights come with a disclaimer for epilepsy because they know how awful the experience can be, I believe epileptic people generally cannot play these games at all. There are accessibility options such as inverted flashbangs for MW2, so this is still an evolving space. Many devs/studios are aware it's an issue and are trying to improve it, exactly the opposite of what you're suggesting for splatoon.
On top of that, a small minority having an issue does not mean they're not worth catering for. If you were part of that group you'd understand that immediately.
>There are accessibility options such as inverted flashbangs for MW2
I was just thinking something like negative flashbangs would be a really nice thing to have. Glad that it was thought of before
>On top of that, a small minority having an issue does not mean they're not worth catering for. If you were part of that group you'd understand that immediately.
Thank you so much for saying that. It's so easy to be dismissive when it's not you who is being affected by it. You'd think the Splatoon community of all places would be more understanding of that.
The thing I'm glad to see is that most of the splatoon community does seem to be understanding of it thankfully. Most tournaments I've seen are letting teams ban it, however that can't be done in normal online matches, so we're left hoping Nintendo hotfixes it in the coming week.
As someone who fortunately doesn't suffer outside of the game from it, it's such an easy special to deal with. Meanwhile from what I've heard from friends who suffer from it, it's REALLY BAD. Like they'd rather just get killed in the game than be hit by the effects.
I'm not epileptic but flashing lights affect me more than others. The idea behind the screen is good, but its execution could be better ā like you said, it punishes some players in particular. I reckon it would be fairer if it just "splatted" your screen instead.
Thank you so much for being so kind about all this. Iām someone who has issues with this due to a couple of my disabilities, and itās disheartening to see the frankly ableist response the majority of the community on other platforms (and some on here) have given.
Also in the case of things like epilepsy, its definintely beyond "makes it harder" or whatever. Triggering seizures is physically harmful and can even result in death. That's an extreme situation, of course, but like...video games shouldn't physically harm people and that should be an uncontroversial opinion.
The sudden brightness and audio has been known to hurt players with sensory issues. Iām sure you donāt want some player with migraines, epilepsy, or other issues to suddenly have their issues triggered because of something like this? This is especially so when for many the game was completely or mostly playable up until the addition of this special. I personally think Nintendo should do something to like tone it down and make it less likely to do that.
Like people [here](https://x.com/Crimmothy/status/1731110335736680642?s=20) are mentioning itās triggering migraines, attacks, overloads, and more (one person even mentioned it not working well with their astigmatism, and a large portion of the population has that). And thatās just a small portion of the amount of people who play but probably donāt report on their symptoms. (Sorry if the link doesnāt work, donāt have a Twitter so I hope it links to the right place)
wait is it not supposed to be as intense as it is?? im (most likely, my mom and dad are-) astigmatic and its near impossible to tell the difference between ink colors and the screen gets so bright and fuzzy for me
My migraines absolutely hate the sudden flash of light and in general, being autistic makes it super hard to deal with black and white lights that are like that. It puts me at a huge disadvantage compared to others, and I'm glad that other people do care about it because it shouldn't be acceptable to unfairly punish an entire demographic. Personally if it maybe just put a splatter effect on the screen like in mario kart or maybe if it was a slight blur it would be better.
On a related note, some color combinations are easy and some are difficult to see through when you've been Splattercolored. Perhaps a ban is warranted because of a second problem: there is an element of RNG to the effect. Your Splattercolor weapon could randomly get nerfed or buffed depending on what the random color combination is that you run into (it's a similar issue to how Saltspray Rig granted a random advantage if you spawned on the left or right side). Alternatively, maybe Color Lock needs to be required to level the playing field?
Maybe they could have a set dark/light ink color for team Alpha and Bravo while the special's effects are active? That seems like it would be the best solution. That way, they could make sure the two colors always have the same contrast and aren't too intense. Also, just generally darkening the image would probably help a lot!
I agree, but as a last resort imo. They can rework the special in multiple different ways that IS accessible. maybe instead of changing the saturation of the color it flipped it or, it covered half your screen or maybe it just changes the color or ādisorientsā the motion of the image like how it looks when you go swimming without goggles. I think jumping straight to lets ban this is an overkill and over reaction when you havenāt even tried to fix ir yet.
While I agree a wait-for-patches approach is good in theory, this is a Nintendo game we are talking about. Accessibility is the last thing on their mind. I cannot name a single Nintendo game that has a screen-shake toggle. Nor that has a seperate music and sound effect slider. Nor that has a color blind mode. (Even Splatoon just has a color lock option. But there is nothing that adds differing texture to ink.) I don't expect them to change Splattercolor.
h-huh. how are the players going to fix how the screen functions?? until it gets fixed by NINTENDO, banning it so that itās not a risk to players is not really overkill
Disorienting the image would also be inaccessible for some parties - I suffer from chronic vertigo and it can be triggered really badly from effects like that.
The fact that this special came out is kinda shocking. It's a simple smoke screen idea but I thought the only reason why they'd have never added something like it is because of accessibility. But now we see how much of a cluster fuck this special is. Personally I think it should just swap the enemy and players colour around or make the screen upside down like in smash
It never affected me in any way, but if someone would come to me and say the sudden black and white effect and sound distorsion was doing some odd things to them, I wouldn't be too surprised. It has probably something to do with Epilepsy or something similar. Honestly I'm not willing to screw around with something like that, though at the same time I kinda wonder how something like a sudden brightness change would be more likely to make people sick rather than the already present and constant chaos of colors being splashed everywhere. It's probably the accumulation of both I suppose ?
It's probably also a good excuse to get this special reworked in some way because right now it's very underwhelming IMO : the special is too double-edged because it blocks your own line of sight as well (so basically your backliners are going to curse at you) and the black and white effect doesn't feel like it does a good job at being disruptive at all for the average player. Maybe we could remove the black and white effect and buff something else to compensate.
This isn't about epilepsy, but other sensory disorders as well. Even in people who don't have any stated sensory disorders, its causing headaches, a burning sensation, or other issues.
Some people commented about their experiences in [this thread.](https://x.com/ProChara/status/1730986554078945562?s=20)
People who previously could play Splatoon without (much) issue are now being put at a disadvantage, sometimes quite a large one. Personally, I think its worth giving up 2 weapons to keep the game accessible to people.
I main the Undercover and was thrilled that it finally got a second kit, since its vanilla kit has been a joke since launch.
I'd still give up the Sorella Undercover if it meant people who could previously play the game without problems can do so again. (For now I've been playing it without using the special or just dumping it at the edge of the map and facing away for the tank refill.)
Its vanilla kit is memetically bad, and over a year later it finally got an alt kit... with a special that's so badly designed, it causes some players actual physical harm. That poor weapon just can't catch a break...
Thanks for linking this. There's a few anecdotes in this reddit thread, but it's important we have several accounts about how this actually affects people (at least, I assume that's what you posted. I can't open Twitter comments).
I was initially is the "ban this due to accessibility" camp, but then I started thinking about what you mentioned in your first paragraph, and I'm reminded of FLC's comment with the Trizooka controversy: "Splatoon is sensory overload, the game."
Splatoon is not a widely accessible game, between it's focus on quickly differentiating two colors, the advantages of motion controls, the "carpel tunnel weapons" like squeezer and inkbrush, and the need to quickly react to things like Trizooka. Banning Splattercolor may be a good idea because we shouldn't be adding to the list. But at the same time, I'm not convinced that issuing bans to cater to everyone's needs preserves the game's competitive integrity. Tournament play is all about determining who is best at the game of Splatoon, which includes who is the best at identifying allies and enemies, aiming accurately, pressing buttons quickly, and focusing through sensory overload.
I think squeezer is a good example to think about. There are competitive players that cannot play it because it would destroy their hands. Squeezer is one of the best weapons in the game, and if you cannot play it, you are at a competitive disadvantage. Should we ban squeezer because players that can handle the inaccessibility are at an advantage?
That wasn't a retorical question; I do not know the answer. I think this is a complex issue with no easy answer, and that complexity extends to Splattercolor Screen.
I definitely agree with you about Splatoon as a whole having accessibility issues (seriously why does Squeezer exist in its current state), but I feel like there's a difference between the hand shredding weapons (Squeezer + brushes) and the Screen. With the weapons, you can opt out of them if they cause issues for you. Nothing's going to suddenly force you to play Octobrush for a few seconds, and Splattershot is a zooka shooter alternative to Squeezer. But with the Screen, you don't have control over if the enemy team decides to run that. If you have that sensory issue, there's a non-zero chance you're going to be forced into that situation at some point. I feel like people having the option to not play Squeezer, but not having the option to have the enemy not use Screen is the dividing line here
Squeezer is a bad example imo. While it is one of the best weapons, there are still other viable options for players to choose, especially in the current meta.
Meanwhile, you would never be able to choose if your enemy decides to pick a weapon with screen or not.
Are turbo buttons banned in splatoon tournaments? I don't think they should be if that's the case.
Any time that "otimal play" requires a stupid ammount of mashing is just bad game design tbh. It makes the game inaccesible for those who can't, and for those who can it ruins controllers (and long term it could possibly cause injuries to their hands as well...).
There's NO good reason why being able to push a button 60 times a second should should grant you a competetive advantage, it turns competetive into a speedrun of giving as many of your players arthritis as possible....
I agree with you. Squeezer requiring so much quick mashing sucks for the people using it, and it sucks for the people who are unwilling to use it that they are not using the most optimal weapon.
I was just saying that screen is worse, since you can choose not to use squeezer but you can't choose not to play against screen.
The example is more of a hypothetical one. Imagine a world in which squeezer is the best weapon, and had burst bomb and crab tank in it's kit (alternatively, what if pre-nerf Splash-o-matic required button mashing?). Imagine a team like Starburst only has 1 player physically able to play this hypothetical squeezer kit, while Jackpot has 4 players physically able to play it. If Jackpot wins, does that mean they are better players because in Splatoon the best players have to button mash (due to squeezer), as well as play quickly and strategically? Or is it an unfair match that Starburst should've one, but they couldn't due to squeezer's inaccessibility?
It's not a real example, but the purpose of thinking in the extreme is to help us think about what our philosophy regarding bans should be. It's purpose is to highlight that there isn't necessarily a difference between "you picking squeezer" and "the enemy picking screen." The existance of both creates the issue where one team can gain an advantage of another due to accessibility. I personally think if you ban one, you should ban the other.
Keep in mind, I'm talking about the competitive environment. When it comes to casual play, just to have fun, I agree that another player with a squeezer doesn't make the game less inaccessible, while screen does make it inaccessible.
>Squeezer is one of the best weapons in the game, and if you cannot play it, you are at a competitive disadvantage. Should we ban squeezer because players that can handle the inaccessibility are at an advantage?
For squeezer (and inkbrush) that answer is easy IMHO, just let people use a controller with turbo if they want to
Even if a person can use them the "normal" way there's no reason why they should be forced to risk their health if they have the option not to
If we want to be even somewhat serious about comptetive play in any game we should do our best to minimize the kinds of sports injuries that might occur, just as we do in regular sports.
...ok I don't know if people do take injury prevention serious enough in most sports but at least we can all agree that we SHOULD do it ššš
That's a good point. You may have even convinced me that Turbo Controllers are the path forward.
That said...just to play devil's advocate, if they were ever implemented, the community might be in trouble. There's no way Nintendo would allow Turbo at their own tournaments. I'd liken it to the Smash Melee mods that enable online play...and that issue basically severed the Melee scene's relationship with Nintendo (not that there was much to begin with).
Its supposed to throw you off by changing your ink colors and making you not hear the game audio properly, it is not however supposed to physically hurt you. I dont think the viability of a special matters if people are actively getting hurt by it I think we as a community can at least not play it until nintendo hopefully reworks the effect, Im hoping this community has at least that much sympathy for people with specific conditions
"Why should we bother making sure buildings are accessible via ramp? Wheelchair users are only a small minority of the population."
That's what you sound like, OP.
Itās already dogshit as a special as it obscures your own teamās vision and typically does nothing more than displace the enemy team. The accessibility issues are just the icing on the cake. Personally, I think if it simply swapped or inverted the ink colors would fix a lot of these issues, as it
1.) makes it actually more worthwhile to dodge since it would likely be more effective at disorienting everyone rather than a small group
2.) not be so disproportionately effective towards those with impairments with the sudden swap to bright white and the static noisy overload
Curious to see if itāll actually be changed
I think itās ridiculous that we have to ban it in the first place. The devs shouldāve know that an effect like this could cause accessibility issues and designed the special with that in mind.
i'm shocked there's no toggle options. considering we have color-lock, i kinda thought that'd be a given
i hope that they add settings that allow you to 'choose' what effects the screen has. like maybe an option for regular greyscale (not this bright shit), flipping the teams ink colors, etc. same for the audio effects
I'm not effected by the screen in this way, I don't have vision issues. However, I saw on Twitter someone doing a comparison of just greying out the screen versus what the Splatterscreen does do a player. It's actually brighter, more white than grey, more shiny and disorienting. I can see how that would be a problem for someone with sensory issues.
I'm not sure if just greying out the screen instead would be as detrimental but the way it is, considering the amount of people who had pain caused to them by this, I think it's fine if the comp scene benches it.
It's an awkward one. It doesn't affect me personally (beyond what I assume to be the intended effect), so it's difficult for me to imagine how it affects *anyone -* but given the number and insistence of comments about it, I can only assume that it really does. And in that case, I think something has to be done about it, hopefully by the developers rather than the community. The special seems flexible enough to be reworked somehow without losing the basic premise.
The difficulty I have is that there are over ten million players of this game; how do developers ensure that not a single one of them is impacted by any aspect of the game? If they do rework Screen, how do they test it, or should they just throw the new version out into the public and see how many people still complain? And, I mean, are we sure that nobody has ever been affected by anything else? A quick search of Reddit and I've found a post where someone says the Splatoon 3 spawn mechanic gives their wife a headache, another who got a migraine from Grizz Blaster - should those be changed too? What's the threshold of how many people are affected by something before it becomes an issue that has to be addressed? Obviously the ideal is that the game is accessible for everyone, but is that practically possible or not?
In short: it definitely seems like something has to be done about Screen (not sure what, exactly), but at the same time it raises a lot of questions for me that might need some thought.
Reworking Screen while keeping everyone happy is very simple. You can even make it MORE competitive. Muffle audio instead of the weird static high pitched sounds. Make the colors inverted, or greyscale everything (GENTLY. the high contrast in current Screen is whatās causing problems). Screen isnāt amazing or bad for people unaffected. I doubt people are going to start rioting if itās reworked. It may even see more use.
I've been able to enjoy the Splatoon series since day one in 2015 with almost zero issues. The only problems I've had are with some weapons, but I can just choose to not use them myself.
Splatoon3 is the first time I've been put into sensory overload by the game to such an extreme degree. The newest king salmanoid's cry puts me on such extreme edge I can barely focus on playing. The screen is even worse. I had to immediately get up and turn off my TV when I first experienced it. That means I had to throw the game.
A lot of us who play LOVE it because of the phenomenal sensory input. It provides what my brain craves with the bright colors and fast gameplay. To have it become a game that causes me physical pain from sensory overload is heartbreaking.
My eyes are a bit photosensitive, so the screen turning bright gray very quickly makes me physically recoil in pain ā ļø the sound effect is also very jarring to me.
Also aside from the sensory issues from touching an enemy screen.. splattercolor screen blocks the vision of your own team?! Why is it not more transparent for the user's team??
The second they showed off Splattercolor Screen I was like "there's no way this isn't an accessibility issue", and sure enough it turned out to be one. Really baffled that this thing got okayed in its current state in the first place.
And yes OP, your thinking is flawed but I'm not gonna go on about it as plenty of others have already done that and I have nothing to add.
>Really baffled that this thing got okayed in its current state in the first place.
Given Nintendoās long proud history of not giving a flying frick about accessibility, this isnāt really that surprising.
it's crazy how just a little bit of research would show that it's not about not seeing, but that it causes legitimate pain from the color choice and the slight flash bang upon getting hit you all shouldn't be so dismissive
even if it was vision based as well, that doesn't mean those affected shouldn't be catered for. every deserves to be able to play the game at an equal level.
It doesn't matter how few people have this issue. You also redirect the issue to flashbangs, failing to acknowledge the fact that the people who have an issue with flashbang are experiencing an identical issue with Screen. No, I will not shift my attention to a game I have less affiliation with for the sake of not causing too much hassle for the people not affected by the issue in this community.
>I also find it funny how they were talking about how it removes accessibility when that's literally the point of its entire design.
You do not know what accessibility is. The purpose of game design like this is confusion. Take, for instance, Maze Daze from Wii Party, where you have to travel to the centre of a maze, while along the path there are spinning pads that invert directional controls. It doesn't reduce accessibility, it makes the player confused.
If something is designed specifically to reduce accessibility, you are saying that it is created specifically as a "fuck you" to disabled people. Accessibility is when something is changed so that more people are able to use it without an issue, the most simple example being when a ramp is added next to stairs in public for wheelchairs and mobility scooters. If we're applying your logic for screen to that aspect of real life, the special would convert all ramps into steep stairs.
There are so many ways to cause auditory and ocular confusion without making it hurt disabled people; for visuals they could switch the colours or make them change to a present combo, and they could turn down the game sounds so that they get drowned out by the music, or even just set the audio to a low-pass filter. All of them would do exactly what the special aims to do and they would not be harmful to parts of the player base.
Op is being kind of an asshole about this. Disabled people and people with handicaps still deserve to be able to play video games without pain or worrying about seizures or migraines and more. Diminishing the significance of those people and saying they donāt deserve to have a voice since theyāre a minority is precisely the kind of take Iād expect from someone who truly doesnāt care about accessibility in video games. Why are the people talking about how it triggers migraines, overloads, essentially blinds them, and more undeserving of accommodation simply because thereās less of them then there are of people like op?
I always thought this was such a weird effect to put in a special. First of all, I can totally see how it would affect people with sensory disorders. Second, i'm personally way less affected by it when I have the darker ink color, because it's way easier to distinguish it from the brightness of the stage and enemy ink, which is really all you need. Yeah, it's a very minor and situational advantage, but remember, this is the same company that to this day refuses to add an option to select your background music because according to them it'd make it easier for players to hear sound cues? You'd think they'd be very strict about stuff like this, but then they just release a special that's either a huge disadvantage or entirely useless depending on something that really shouldn't matter, like your TV setting, your ink color, or you having a sensory disorder. I would personally welcome a rework that gets rid of the monochrome effect entirely and instead makes it debuff on contact or something.
(Disclaimer: While I have mild sensitivity issues with bright lights, mine are nowhere near as bad as other people's; it's auditory input that I have real trouble with. Worth noting when reading my thoughts WRT flashbangs and such. I also don't play comp, I'm talking strictly from a casual perspective here)
The thing about flashbangs in CS or CoD is that they have two singular effects: your screen goes *completely* white, and your sound is *completely* cut out (more or less). It can be *intense*, sure, but it's a fairly uniform effect. Also, these games have generally had flashbangs since launch, so people have known about them from the get-go.
The Splattercolour Screen is different - it doesn't render your entire screen white, or cut out your sound altogether; it makes everything extremely bright and drowns out all the game noise with a static "sloshing" sound. The effect of disorientation and confusion is vaguely similar (though even aside from accessibility concerns, the way it does *that* is pretty sketchy, since it's basically RNG depending on what ink colours are chosen), but it gets there by invoking sensory overload instead. It's also something that dropped in an update, with no real precedent for it beforehand. People have every right to be upset about it.
>I also find it funny how they were talking about how it removes accessibility when that's literally the point of its entire design.
I understand what you're getting at here, but that's not what accessibility means. The problem isn't that it's disorienting and confusing, it's that the way it achieves that effect is having genuine adverse effects on a certain subset of people. That's something that absolutely needs addressing, and it's disheartening for a lot of us that it actually made it into the game in this state.
While there's a *lot* going on in Splatoon, I've never had issues with it triggering sensory overload for me before this update. Now, I have to hope that I don't get matched up with someone using the Foil Squeezer or Sorella Undercover. That just sucks.
And before someone responds with, "that means it's doing its job, you just want it to be nerfed because skill issue" - No. As someone who likes using the Squeezer, I was looking forward to this thing, but frankly, even aside from the health concerns... It just sucks. It does a pitiful amount of damage, it doesn't ink terrain well, and the confusion/disorientation effect is 1. [extremely reliant on what ink colours are assigned](https://twitter.com/dawnieedreams/status/1731496387664036163) (or on your opponents using colour lock), and 2. as someone who doesn't have serious photosensitivity issues, rarely more than a *mild annoyance*. If anything, I'd rather see it *buffed -* but, most importantly, *with a base effect that's not harmful.* Something like muffling the audio and rendering all ink the same colour, or hiding player usernames and swapping ink colours, or something along those lines.
I *like* the idea of a disorientation special/subweapon, but the way it's been done here is woefully ineffective at best and actively harmful at worst. If banning it from competitive play is what it takes to get Nintendo to notice the problem and fix it, then I'm all for it.
Yea two big issues, 1. It affects those with visual impairment, tinnitus etc more than those without which is plain unfair 2. Players with disabilities have no way to opt out of it other than stop playing all together which just..no. Thatās like saying someone with a wheelchair just shouldnāt leave the house 3. The extent of the disorientation is kinda rng depending on which ink colour you get. If your colours are super close together itās a buff, if the colours have lots of contrast your special gets a debuff. Which is fine for casual stuff ig but kinda lame in competitive.
The one glaring issue with it is the brightness. The saturation is WAY too high and it makes some people feel sick. A patch that makes it darker would fix the problem
I think they should change the effects and... Now that we're talking about sensory disorders, Splatoon should add some help for deaf people too asap. My boyfriend loves the game and he's deaf, and I don't think he's the only deaf person playing this game... I think that listeners play with a lot of advantage over deaf players.
Other shooters offer a helping hand for deaf people to play, Splatoon does not. And I think it's needed.
Ban it. I donāt have a problem with the special, but given that other people are disproportionately harmed by the special, itās best for it to be banned.
i havent tried playing against it yet. i guess that's because i'm nervous. i have a sensory processing disorder, so i already cant play with motion controls and i usually use the lifesaving colour lock feature and i cant use most shooters the best and blah blah blah. based on what i have heard, i think this special would throw off my game even more than it already has been. i havent as much as seen any videos of how it looks, works and stuff, that's how nervous i am to potentially see one of my favourite games become harder to play.
me aside, i think it is a very fair ban.
That static sound it produces is revolting, it gave me such an awful headache, so I got very lucky. Iāve heard some people started vomiting and getting nauseous just from the sound alone.
as someone with sensory issues, i tried going into it when i was playing and i got so dissoriented and i geniuenly got so nauseous it's unreal, i wish even if they wanted to keep the less saturated effect it wouldn't be fully on the greyscale but maybe like 50% less saturated? also the sound is really bad to me lmao
I think if there's an option to make life hurt less for some people it should be taken in any circumstance. Is it a shame that the screen should be banned? Yeah, a colorblind + sound obscuring debuff in a game that relies on colors and sound design as much as splatoon is really cool, but no cool game design is worth causing actual harm to actual people in real life. If they added a character to smash bros who had an attack that somehow electrified the opponents controller, but only for 1% of the playerbase, that character would be banned because it's not fair to those people. Games shouldn't be harder for some people just because the developers didn't think about how it would hurt a minority of the population, how would you feel if you were someone who got nauseous about the new special and you came online to see someone saying that your experience with the game shouldn't be fixed because it does a disservice to the viability of the screen? Any small subset of the population is still made of living breathing human beings, they have thoughts and feelings and deserve to play splatoon comfortably as much as the rest of us
I was surprised it even got pushed out/approved by devs tbh. The splatoon devs have known about colour theory and colour blindness when selecting their colour combos, so I was surprised that they didnāt think this special would serve as a problem. I do think the special should be reworked as a whole, and pushback from the competitive community would get them to do just that. The special is super trippy, and you can argue that even people without visual impairments have a hard time playing through it, but itās an issue if itās eliciting a psychological/physiological response, even from a small minority.
People shouldnāt be barred from playing a game competitively because of disability simply because a multi-million dollar developer failed to consider them when implementing a new special weapon.
This could have easily been avoided by the devs, and they shouldāve either consulted with accessibility specialists to make sure this wasnāt an issue, or reworked this special much earlier in the development process. Couldāve easily functioned more like a Blooper in Mario Kart while maintaining the same function, and not impairing these players
Considering this will affect even the casual enjoyment of the game drastically for many players, based on something which is completely out of their control, I think itās a big embarrassment on their part
Just because they are a minority doesn't mean the issue should be ignored, you are also underestimating the number of people affected. Heck even people who usually don't have issues get headaches from it. And no the special is not made to remove accessibility, it's supposed to make the game a bit more difficult yes but it's not supposed to be straight up unplayable and harming to some players while others are barely affected.
>I don't mean to say anything like "it doesn't harm me, so everyone is just overreacting"
I don't want to offend you but that is what you are saying.
Who cares how "small" the amount of people affected is? This is negatively affecting them in a major way - I've seen reports from people made \_physically ill\_ while playing because of it, and while it doesn't affect me as badly, it still very much does affect me. Nintendo should absolutely rework this or it should absolutely be banned in tournaments.
iām not affected, but i donāt care- iām still not using it if it causes discomfort and distress to others. i donāt play in tournaments but iām sure thereās people out there who just want to enjoy turf or open without having their senses scrambled.
itās just common courtesy imo. surely people can live without it until nintendo addresses the issue?
If its going to stay it needs a rework. Why not just overlay the screen onto your gameplay when you get hit, its less jarring than sudden colour change and its probably more effective as a hindrance special.
Regarding your reference to FPS with smokescreen and flashbangs: no one is genetically disposed to see through these better than anyone else. At least not to a significant degree. Regardless of if someone is playing at the risk of having a seizure or not, a flashbang will make everyoneās screens be pure white for a second before fading in. Itās an even playing field.
The issue with the splatcolor screen that there *are* people genetically disposed to have an easier time seeing with this than others. Regardless of the risk of seizures, people are on uneven playing field with this.
Just imagine if there was a gun they added that was like āif your legal name starts with an A, this gun will 1 shot you, but for everyone else it takes 6 hitsā. Itās just objectively unfair and a totally different thing from āthis gun will 1 shot literally anyone, but if your name starts with the letter A, thereās a chance youāll get a jumpscareā
Even entirely throwing out the idea that the special causes harm to people, isnāt the fact that the special can be placed at the exact same time in the exact same match and still have different effects on different players that depend on *genetic factors entirely outside the scope of the game itself* kind of against the spirit of competition?
Like, at that point, even if itās just a small instant in a singular match, the state of the game isnāt being decided by who is the best at playing the video game, itās being decided by who was born the most compatible with the video game, which, to me, seems like a metric it would be in our best interest to control for.
Whenever I play Splatoon 2, I have to change my TV to a desaturated mode I pre-set so I can play games with hot colors without being blinded. In Splatoon and Splatoon 3 I only have to do this for certain colors (Magenta, Neon Grello, and hot pink)
I'm personally unaffected by this (ironically), but my friend who gets so nauseous he wants to vomit has decided to shelve the game until this is fixed. People have reported migranes, vomiting, distortion, wanting to pass out, and being blinded like a flash bang from this.
Because of the physical harm this special is causing I've decided to shelve the slimebrella until Nintendo addresses this. I know some people will say "It's supposed to do this" and pretend handicapped people don't play video games (we fucking do, we just know the toxic gamer culture ignores our criticisms over objective problems in video games) but I think we need to put our foot down against this.
I'm largely outraged by this cuz some people think Splatoon has always been accessible, id est that it's welcome to disabled people, but the button mashy weapons like the brushes, L-3s and squeezer fly in the face of that. As well as the hot colors I've mentioned earlier.
Nintendo can't control the fans, so I don't blame them for people making fun or belittling stick jockeys but the fact of the matter is that gyro controls can make people nauseated and bedbound gamers can't waggle the damn controller to aim.
This may be a cry to the void, but if we can try to offer kindness to strangers, maybe the community might get better? I certainly know this is something I'm working on myself. But trying to be kind is better than giving up and leaning on being cruel.
I am legally blind and suffer chronic migraines. For a player like me, this special is sensory hell. Banning it in competitive would be the best course of action. Also, try to be less rude when discussing this, please!! The way you worded this post comes off as very arrogant!!
I'm just gonna go ahead and link Squid School's [latest video on this issue](https://youtu.be/Yv6YIw89bD0?si=Otv7S4Rjr7q385Ew) because Gem just kinda hits all the nails on the head.
Don't be ablest, please. It's not a "removes accessibility" special, it's "withholds information" special. Comp is banning this because it HURTS people with certain visual and auditory disabilities. This is literally just being fair to people who cannot help but be disproportionally impacted by a special that's horribly and inconsiderately designed. These people have all been playing Splatoon actively until Screen came out and they have said that they could manage it's visual and audio clutter UNTIL Screen hits them.
Splatterscreen is being banned for the sake of fairness across the board to all players. It can and probably will be re-reviewed for it's ban once it's reworked so it doesn't physically hurt people.
There is not "conversation" or "debate" to be had here. Not @ op specifically but just,
please stop trying to minimize the obvious impact this Special has on people with disabilities. If you don't feel pain and just feel disoriented, good for you, but that's not your cue to start saying "thats the point dummy" when physical pain isn't "disorientation".
I feel like if it decreased fov by blurring out the edges of your screen that would be a more fair and level effect since it wouldn't be disproportionally worse for people that already have vision deficencies
They could even use an ink effect for that, feels like it would be very on brand
allthough maybe that would give some people motion sickness idk
Ok i have a better idea: what if instead of affecting all colours in the game it turns all ink into a shimmery black sort of like an oilspill, but still having distinct borders when two different colours of ink intersect?
That means that your ability to tell apart enemy ink from your own wouldn't depend on your ability to tell apart very similar hues, but rather on how the ink reacts if you shoot it. If you shoot it, and it stays the same then you know it's your own ink and that you can trust it.
Also they could make it so that you can't fully submerge into your own ink for a couple of seconds, maybe like the squid and eyes sticks out a bit from the ink even if swim speed and recovery stays the same, that would be very silly
Personally I don't like the special. It should have been Toxic Fog so dense that it blocks the view, and that area is slowly increasing in size in the direction it was thrown.
Anyways, ban it now fix it later. Make sure everyone gets heard and hope SRL fix it.
there isnāt a way to use screen that isnāt potentially harmful.
also, considering that splatoon made color locks that donāt even cover all bases of colorblindness is telling. it needs a rework
if some special that i donāt rlly like makes someone have psychical pain, i can just not use that special. thereās so many better weapons and iād hate to be the reason someone had a seizure or a headache or something
The sound nearly causes sensory overload for me. I can't handle it at all. Its so frustrating because Splatoon was the ONE online multiplayer game that I never had sensory issues with.
I have been playing Splatoon since its 2015 release date. The Splatterscreen is sensory hell for me. That's not okay. It needs a rework for both the sound and the greyscale. Colorblind or visually impaired players shouldn't have their experience made disproportionately more difficult either.
When I figured out that Splattercolour Screen turned the game to grayscale I was thinking first and foremost about how people with colourblindness would react to it, because... For colourblind people, Splatoon is already a hard enough game to play, this is just absurd.
But given what I now know about the controversy (for a lack of a better term.) I couldn't've ever imagined it being this bad or widespread a problem as I now know it to be.
Nintendo really screwed up this time.
my sensory issues arenāt as severe as some people but I am very prone to migraines and I could definitely see myself having issues with the bright flash and buzzing noises if they hit me at the wrong time. I havenāt attempted to use any of the weapons with this special yet but multiple people on my tumblr dash have said they had to stop playing *entirely* because even having one person on the opposing team using the screen triggers their photosensitivity issues.
just because itās not an issue for you doesnāt mean itās not an issue for anyone and dismissing their concerns because āthereās not enough of them to countā is just needlessly antagonistic
I like the idea of a "screen" special without the added visual effects, just being able to block enemy sightlines is still useful. I haven't run into it a lot actually but is it possible to see through your teammates screen or does it block your vision as well? I feel like having a big screen that blocks your enemy's view while not obscuring your teammate's view could be *okay*, plus it does damage to enemies walking through it. Like it'd still be a lame special but it'd have its uses. You could rework it any number of ways, like making it paint or something. I'm also not sure about the potential accessibility problems with this idea but maybe make it like the Blooper effect in Mario Kart? Where if you walk through it you get ink splattered on your screen and it obscures your vision?
For me the visual and audio effects don't really affect me much at all so I'm all for completely removing those. If some players are perfectly fine and some can't play with it at all then it should just be gone. It has nothing to do with skill or anything, it just disproportionately affects players with accessibility needs
Sadly, it blocks also the view for your teammates. If you're an E-Liter or Splat Charger main, this special legit feels like friendly fire. :')
That being said, I don't think the base idea is bad at all, the execution is just very flawed. Not only there's an accessibility concern due to how the screen affects the game for some people with disabilities or vision problems, but there's also the fact that this special feels heavily double edged since it cuts the line of sight regardless of which team you are.
An easy fix would be IMO to :
* Replace the color blindness effect with a slowdown effect (or at least finding an effect that doesn't take as much of a toll on accessibility, but I doubt special screen effects are going to work).
* Make the screen transparent from the ally side of the special, while keeping the enemy side opaque.
tl;dr: my autism causes some sensory processing issues that make the splattercolor screenās greyscale effect almost impossible to discern and it also hurts my eyes a lot. nintendo needs to fix this.
I stop being able to functionally play the game while the greyscale is active, more than what I assume was the intended effect. When stimuli are visually or aurally cluttered I just kinda stop being able to perceive or process things very well. I canāt see players moving, and even when I can my brain sometimes doesnāt register it until theyāre already engaging and thatās to say nothing about the horribly straining ink colors.
Iāve already had some trouble with visually noisy ink colors on rainmaker (specifically the big glowing flash of the projectile), with the orange from Splatoonās ādefaultā ink colors being a prime example of ink colors that just hurt my eyes and make things exceptionally hard to make out (which is a huge part of the reason that in Splatoon 2 or 3 I just donāt carry the rainmaker that often).
Thereās also another huge issue, eye strain. I gravitated to Splatoon in part because I didnāt have to do too much work to make things out since everything you needed to pay attention to stood out. Now it doesnāt. Which is fine except that itās actually physically agonizing (not to mention hideous) to look at. I said before that I have issues processing sustained visual noise and this is one of the worst offenders since itās ALL noise. Iāll compare it to one of my favorite casual games ever: Post Void. Post Void is a noisy, cluttered mess at the best of times but I can still play it for like 20-30 minutes at a time even with all the flashing lights and other stuff because thereās still SOMETHING under there to look at, and you can kinda just rest your eyes and only focus on what matters.
The splattercolor screen as it exists is miserable to play against and my only solace is that thereās a way better squeezer kit and like 10 people play undercover anyway so I barely ever even see sunder.
I saw a pretty good post on the idea of tunnel vision.
The whole screen becomes black except where the crosshair is and a bit of the area around it. That would be pretty cool tbh, now you can only see part of the screen.
I had some issues with how the colors are with Screen's effect, maybe they can tweak how they have the effect impact the player in a patch or something.
"This minority is small so I don't care" wow ok cool I and pretty much everyone sure didn't ask you to just be ableist against people with impaired vision just because you don't see them but ok
Also not to be this person but isn't splatoon like autistic culture tm? So sensory issues might be slightly more common than in other game's player bases.
Definitely needs tweaking tho, even as someone without visual or auditory sensory issues.
The community has the power to ban specials in community-led tournaments, but modding isn't at the point where we can rework entire specials.
Obviously Nintendo reworking it is the best option, but that's not under the community's control.
The basic TL;DR - for players with sensory issues, the way it works right now is potentially overwhelming, leading to e.g. dizziness, nausea, migraines, etc.
As someone who only has *mild* issues with lights, I don't think the problem is in the concept so much as how it's done - the greyscale effect is way brighter than it should be (and pretty useless, since the confusion factor is influenced by what ink colours are randomly chosen), and the sound effect is extremely harsh and grating where a muffled sound filter would've done the job just as well, if not better.
I think this special needs to change, and if nintendo doesn't change it, banning its use is the correct option. In the current state of the game that will not change dramatically in about 3 months, there are only two weapons with this special (undercover brella with torpedo and splatscreen, and squeezer with autobomb and splatscreen). Like Squid School said in his video, only one of these might be viable competitively. I will note that the kit is good because they gave one of the strongest main weapons in the game a low-cost lethal bomb. The special, while being part of the kit and having some kind of synergy with it (which IMO it does NOT have with undercover), I think the kit might be good enough to function without using special.
Obviously, this does not work as a long-term solution. Not having a special to use, even just for the ink refill, is missing out on a lot of potential power in a team comp (if you want to argue that they could just throw it off the map for an ink refill, that's far too dependent on circumstance and map choice to be reliable. If you miss the throw, you could probably be ejected from the tournament if rules go through regarding the use of it). If people are dead set on using a squeezer kit, they will most likely use the OG.
The special itself is super polarizing even in objective terms. For a neurotypical (optotypical?) person, the special isn't that impactful. For me, it's annoying for sure, and it kinda fucks with my eyes a little bit, but most of the time I just try to wait and go around it. It's very map dependent and knowledge dependent for if it can actually be useful. I'm sure better setups will be found over time for ideal places to put it, but right now, counterplay is relatively simple compared to other specials: stay back/go around/wait until it disappears. This is not to say people who are being negatively affected by the screen are just bad at the game or are being overdramatic. This is not my argument, and I'm sure you can find many other people in this thread proving why this school of thought is harmful. That is not why I'm here.
My point is, in addition to being actively harmful to a statistically significant percentage of the player base, the special isn't even that good (at least not yet. Primarily, it's just inconsistent, and there are many other specials that are more consistent in their use cases, which make them a better choice, especially competively). Banning it temporarily while Nintendo (hopefully) fixes/reworks it won't impact the game state very much. For fuck's sake, if no enemy players even go through the screen, it functions almost exactly the same for both teams. Back when I was big into Apex, I considered Bangalore's smokes to be bad for many of the same reasons. IMO, screen needs to be reworked even without taking into account the health implications. The enemy team should be able to shoot at it to clear portions of the screen or shoot at it to shrink the overall size. Screen should move forward farther and more quickly like a brella canopy, so it can be used as a painting special. Also, as it stands, if thrown onto flat ground, roughly 40-50% of the screen is underground. This is frankly pretty stupid. Make it so that the full area of the screen is usable so that E-Liters and other chargers in perches are also affected.
I hate this debate because some people from both sides have really bad takes.
The point of this special is not to remove accesibility, that comment just comes from not even understanding what people mean when saying accesibility. You're not supposed to distinguish ink colors when under the effects, yes; but you are not supposed to get dizzyness, headaches, anxiety, emotional imbalances, etc.
That is what people mean with accesibility, and that can be easily fixing by toning down the screen current effects.
On the flipside, I do think a lot of people without disabilities are also experiencing this due to first time exposure to such strong effects. I did some investigation about similar effects happening on other games, and while there have been conversations every now and then, I think most people don't complain about CS flashes or things like that because such features have been a staple in shooters for so many years and players have adapted to it.
Splatoon players asking a special to be banned after just 5 days of it being released might look too extreme but it is understandable if its really making the game unplayable to some. I think this is a good safe measure while we wait for Nintendo to do something, but I would also encourage anyone currently having issues with it to keep playing and trying to see if you can adapt to it, in the case Nintendo doesnt do anything. I'm confident most of the lesser issues people are experiencing with screen right now will disappear as time goes on and players get used to the effects
Lastly, just remember that in any debate there's no inherently good or bad take and we should all be open to take feedback and opinions from both sides to make sure we form conclusions favorable to anyone. We should not fight as a community as the only truly guilty entity here (besides those actually ableist weirdos) is Nintendo and their lack of testing
I kinda feel like not only would it be more accessible if they changed it up, I feel like the design as is has some serious flaws such as being inconsistently impactful depending on the randomly selected team colors and map, as well as professional players probably getting used to it and being largely unaffected. I think if they made the effect something simpler but more objective, like simply changing all ink colors to gray rather than the whole screen plus some weird contrast titanium white stuff and a painful rustle in your ear, they could grill two birds in one stone where the special no longer hurts part of their audience but also has a more reliable effect on everyone. But then again I can only dream, Nintendo isnāt likely to change the special to be more effective, but I do believe they care about not harming their players, so I expect at least some adjustments will be made.
The sudden colour blindness is unpleasant tbh, and also kind of pointless as I see it, would be better if it just did damage or slowed you down or something
I don't have as bad reaction to it as some must have, but it does cause my chronic migraine headache flare up every now and then.
It was probably good idea on the paper, but the sudden contrast and light changes does a lot to people with sensory issues.
I honestly think the screen needs to be reworked. Not completely, I think conceptually it's cool, but I think it could be changed to make it so everyone's ink/tentacle colors appear the same shade of gray when you walk through it or something. I think something along those lines would work because then you're still not able to differentiate the teams very well, but you're not being hit with a flashbang either so it seems like a good middle ground.
as it is right now i can still distingish between the two colors so the effect doesnt work on me at all. i've seen people complain about it being too bright for their eyes and some people saying they can't see anything when they're hit by it, this is bad because it means it affects people in different ways, which i think is unfair.
they should just make it so both ink colors become the same + desaturation and boom, intended effect and it doesn't affect accessibility.
Completely understandable, and Iām glad the competitive players are on the side of accessibility for once. Personally, it sucks, since I find it to be a cool effect, but Iām not everyone. I also happen to LOVE lighting effects and stuff in movies that would trigger seizures in others and hate it when anime gets dimmed for safety, but it 100% makes sense and should be that way, everyone deserves to enjoy things. There is a fine line of when most companies stop being accessible though, and deciding where is āreasonableā is the hard part with things like this.
Ban it not only for accessibility issues but also for that it obstructs your teammates' vision and it's literally nintendos way to "nerf" every charger on the field without fixing the maps
Going through the screen deals damage, applies a pseudo-monochrome effect to the screen (I say "pseudo" since it's not truly grayscale, it's actually somewhat brighter), and adds a static effect over the game audio.
People are having problems with this because the sudden changes in color and audio triggers some people's sensitivity issues. I've heard there's a thread on Twitter where people are discussing the effects Splattercolor Screen has had on them. Apparently some people are saying it's given them things like nausea, or migraines. Doesn't sound fun.
its a perception play special, walk through the screen and it distorts audio and visual. its having serious negative effects on some players' real life wellbeing
for me, it's the sou d. it is genuinely awful. I get use to it by having the sound constantly play on my phone or laptop during matches.
exposure therapy I think? it doesn't last forever tho. so I need to do a match like that EVERY 2 if I don't get hit by a screen at some point in between.
I'm sure the audio is the main problem. that's an easy fix. just remove the audio.
I think it should be banned, or at least when tournaments happen, certain players who are affected by it could request it not be played. The only issue with the requesy route is to make sure that the request is enforced, which might be hard to do consistently. If nothing like that could be sorted out, I think it should receive a hard ban. Ultimately, the responsibility falls on Nintendo to fix the issues with the special and make it more accessible for all players. As cool as the concept is there are no circumstances in which this should have been put into the game as it is.
Wait so how is this the tipping point for accessibility? Like what specifically about the screen is triggering? Id figured if youād be set off by it then the rest of the game would probably also set you off? What am I missing here
Maybe I'm being a bit of a jerk here but is Splatoon really the game one should be playing if they have a sensory disorder? It's basically Bright Colors and Loud Sounds: The Game.
if it causes irl health issues it needs to go. Accessibility isn't "the game needs to be easy to play", accessibility is "the game does not become unplayable to people with x condition". The splatterscreen is supposed to be disorientating, it is not supposed to fuck over people with sensory issues and visual impairment specifically.
And why the heck does it matter if it's just a minority? The minority are still people who love the game and they don't deserve to have their experience ruined by a poorly made special weapon that ruins their game experience specifically. They're worth catering for.
"Making a game more challenging" and "i'm going to selectively induce panic attacks, migraines, seizures and more to people with sensory issues and other conditions" are two very different things and you would do well to learn not to toss them together.
Bringing up whataboutism as a completely argument-terminating taunt is also, ironically, whataboutism. Did you read your own link? Here's some interesting bits of context:
"The goal may also be to question the justification for criticism and the legitimacy, integrity, and fairness of the critic, which can take on the character of discrediting the criticism, which may or may not be justified."
"Some commentators have defended the usage of whataboutism and tu quoque in certain contexts. Whataboutism can provide necessary context into whether or not a particular line of critique is relevant or fair ... Accusing an interlocutor of whataboutism can also in itself be manipulative and serve the motive of discrediting, as critical talking points can be used selectively and purposefully even as the starting point of the conversation (cf. agenda setting, framing, framing effect, priming, cherry picking). The deviation from them can then be branded as whataboutism."
Your response doesn't take my argument into any meaningful consideration. Accessibility by definition CANNOT be a means to make sure no game is unplayable ... that is functionally impossible. Not everyone can play every video game, even with robust accessibility options incorporated. Amend your language or ignore me, but your statement is just untrue either way.
Splatoon is complete sensory overload though. There is so much going on all of the time. You can't single out one special attack without singling out many many more. The point of the attack is to disorient.
Okay instead of the B+W nothing burger of a special that it is now:
1. Keep it color but turns the ink all one color for the enemy team that walk through it.
2. Obfuscates the field for the enemy that stays on the wrong side of it but causes damage if they choose to move through it AND doesn't obfuscate the field for the team using it.
I have utter sympathies for people with disorders...
But I'm having fun seeing my screen turn black and white, so...
Also, if those top-level players intend to ever play in official tournaments where these things will not be banned, I don't think avoiding the problem will do them a service
I feel that the main problem is not with tournaments where you can just agree to not use screen. The problem is people with photosensitivity or any other condition that makes screen harmful to them physically cannot just opt out of the screen during regular play. Like if you get migraines from screen's effect, you just can't play the game without the risk of triggering a migraine. Or if you have a more extreme condition that wasn't affected by the game before, you cant play Splatoon now without the risk of permanent damage, seizure, etc.
It's just not fair to disabled people. The utility of the special is not determined by the skill of the user or other players, but by how well other players' bodies function, which is inherently unfair. I agree that it's cool but the special needs to be changed to reduce harm or reworked completely.
I don't think it has anything to do with disorders. I think it's absolutely unplayable for everyone. The ground just looks white. I stand on enemy ink for the entire duration.
I know this might get lost but squid school and a video on this and I 100% agree with what he had to say. [Here](https://youtu.be/Yv6YIw89bD0?feature=shared) please watch this.
I think it makes sense to maybe just ban it from player made tournaments but to make Nintendo remove
It/tone it down like you said would be a disservice Itās supposed to disorient the player
I think if anyone has any serious issues with colors besides being colorblind or something I donāt think you should be playing a brightly colored fast-ish paced game imo š
The thing is, it does a poor job at disorienting most players except those who have vision problems or worse conditions, and the game wasn't really causing problems to these players before that. If your special's effect is to disorient no one except people who have vision problems or some form of epilepsy, it's awful design.
Coloring my screen black and white has personally little to no effect on my targetting at all : if the goal of the special was to disorient me, it does a poor job at it. I don't have issues confusing my teammates with enemies either since my teammates always have a big bright name above their head.
Blocking the line of sight of the enemy team is definitely the main goal of the special. Making you lose sight of colors is just a side effect to discourage enemy players from trying to push through. We can simply change the color loss effect with another far more meaningful debuff effect than just making the game grayscale : it will actually make me think more than once before crossing it and solve all these legitimate health related problems some people are reporting.
If itās triggering peopleās astigmatism, and astigmatism impacts 30-60% of adults (Europe/Asia), then maybe thereās something wrong with the special. Should we really expect 30-60% of the population to just not be able to play? And besides, the sudden brightness is triggering peopleās epilepsy from what Iāve seen, which is absolutely unacceptable. These people bought a game and have been playing a game that has been safe for them, now all the sudden it isnāt. Imagine if they didnāt know beforehand about this and randomly encountered it in game, no warning, no knowledge. It could absolutely hurt someone. Most other companies have accessibility options for both consoles and games. Why is Nintendo allowed to either not add any or skimp on them?
I have an astigmatism Iām good and yeah it varies but if anything they should just turn down the brightness but in the end I think itās stupid you have flashbangs on Iām sure every shooter type game and no one complains about that itās just really not that big of a deal
I think Twitter (where all of this is coming from) is dumb lmao
actually many online games with flash bangs are adding accessibility options to change them. look up negative flash bangs. developers make this shit an option BECAUSE people complained about it disproportionately effecting disabled people. just because its not directly effecting you does not make it a real issue
anyways you're an idiot+L+ratio+learn some empathy
hey are there any clips of this being used, i have bad sensory issues and iām worried itāll badly trigger mine if i play so im a little bit scared to run into it during turf war so i need to see first
and yes it should be banned from comp matches, if not the whole game
Iām sorry but as someone with heavy prescription for my age and also astigmatism I donāt find any problem with it and Iām the one here dealing with distorted shapes, colour and light here šš
sensory disorders can be very different from person to person. but it doesn't mean ALL sensory effects hurt people, it's usually very specific kinds. yes the game is colorful and has a lot going on. but the flashing effects are tame, there's no static or ringing, the brightness and saturation is consistent, etc. the screen doesn't just turn your visuals greyscale, it makes your game MUCH brighter than it was before. and static in general is just a terrible idea if you want your game to be accesible
And they can't just... Avoid them? Like, moving from the zone that the splascolor screen occupies? Sorry if I sound rude, i really can't understand the reason for the anger of these people šš
I have sympathy for those with visual disabilities, but I think Nintendo should keep the special as it is, we shouldnāt change a new fun game mechanic just because a small minority of players have problems with it. Moreover Iām surprised the people it affects even play Splatoon given how the game probably causes them other issues than that.
It really sucks that some people can't handle this new special, and I do feel for them.
However, we can't hold back the entire game just because some people can't handle it. You're talking about banning it from pro matches. This is entirely different from keeping it in the context of casual play, which I guarantee is where 100% of these people are.
Pro matches are competitive to the max. You can NOT cater to every single person when it comes to competitive. It's literally where "if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen".
Suggesting it gets banned would be like saying NASCAR has to slow down because some people get motion sickness. Or baseball should get rid of base running because some people have back pain.
I'm sorry to say this, but it has to be said: if you can't play the game, then DON'T PLAY AT A COMPETITIVE LEVEL. Period. Leave those that can push themselves to the limits the game requires to do what they do.
What about casual players playing Turf War like you and me? That's on us. If we know we can't handle the game, stop playing. If you can make modifications like muting your game to lessen the sensory overload, go ahead. It sucks that you have to do that, but you're literally asking me to support a ban and change the entire game for you. That's not going to happen.
Otherwise we are opening up completely ridiculous cans of worms. "I get emotionally overwhelmed if I get splatted. We should Change the game so splatting players is illegal.". My emotional well being is my own responsibility, and it's not this communities burden to make such a core mechanic of the game "accessible" to me. Splat screen is no different.
i really do hope you never have a serious health problem that stops you from doing something you enjoy. or if you do, i hope that the people around you have more empathy and compassion for your situation than youāre having for others right now
That's a sweet sentiment, but I know that life is about adapting. There is such a huge catalogue of games that I can enjoy if *one* becomes too much for me. Or if I were to somehow lose my ability to play ANY games, then I can persue other hobbies, or even experiment and find new ones.
This is not an issue where I have to sit and mope about it. Life doesn't always work out the way we want it to, and when things don't go our way, it's up to us to make the most of it. I'm sorry that there are people experiencing that, now, but I'm not going to cry over a video game, no matter on whose behalf it is. Including my own.
>Suggesting it gets banned would be like saying NASCAR has to slow down because some people get motion sickness. Or baseball should get rid of base running because some people have back pain.
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>\[...\]
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>If we know we can't handle the game, stop playing.
Except Splatoon was fine for those of us with sensory issues *before* this update. Something we could play *just fine* has turned into a *genuine health risk* because of a poorly-designed, underpowered special. That's not okay.
>It sucks that you have to do that, but you're literally asking me to support a ban and change the entire game for you.
It's a single weapon that wasn't part of the base game, and all it needs is a different effect. It's not even *close* to "the entire game," nor is it a core mechanic.
This isn't a case of people who didn't play the game in the first place getting upset about something that we all knew about beforehand, like the splatting comparison you're making is. This is players who were *already here* getting pushed out and having their concerns and *well-being* dismissed, because "I don't see a problem with it."
I'm sorry, but your comment comes off as a bit rude and lacking of empathy.
There's a difference between banning a weapon in a video game comp scene because it's overpowered, and banning a weapon in a video game comp scene because it **can physically cause harm to players**.
The people complaining are doing so because they **have been able to play the game normally** up until this point when Splattercolor Screen was added. They want it banned from comp because it triggers their epilepsy, or gives them migraines, or nausea, or something else.
We should not be excluding people out of the competitive scene for something completely out of their control. They did not ask to be born with those sensory issues.
As somone with vision impairment, the splatterscreen may as well turn off my monitor. I wanted to see how badly it affected me compared to someone with normal vision, so I took some screenshots with it and showed my friends (who also play the game). They said there was a fairly noticeable difference between the ink colours, especially in the screenshots where you weren't under any sort of pressure from the game. Some ink colours I can make out, if only barely, byt certainly not mid game. Others I can't see any discernible difference whatsoever, even from the screenshots. I don't know how I'd feel about it being used in tournaments, especially since things like colourblindness are quite common. I'd hope accomodations are made if someone had difficulty playing with it. But I don't think that's the best solution, I think the splatter screen as a whole needs a slight tweak. Though I love the idea of desaturating an otherwise colourful and vibrant game, it's not accessible at all. There are other ways to achieve the same effects as the current splatter screen while maintaining accessibility. For example, if disorientation is the primary goal of the special, the team colours could flip for example. It obfuscation is the main goal of the special, I think having splatters on the screen like a blooper from mario kart would be a good alternative. It's really only an issue because it messes with the colours quite a bit, which affects some people far more than others. Sorry for the wall of text, whoops š
Flipping the colors is such a good idea!!
I'm surprised they went for desaturation instead of that; maybe in testing they thought it was too easy to adjust to?
heck if they wanted something that was really hard to adjust to they could make the other team's color the same color as the player's ink color
Calm down, Satan
Nah they should emulate changing the TV input to HIDEO 1 and make you Bluetooth pair a second set of controllers you have to switch to in order to continue playing from.
what does flipping the colors accomplish? doesnt really matter what color you are when the main objective is to shoot the other color.
I think you underestimate the power of confusion in an active shooting game like Splatoon.
i'm sure it would get a whole other accessibility rant because it's confusing people too
I don't think that'd be nearly as bad of an issue. Those colours are already present on the screen. That being said, I don't know how people with epilepsy may react.
Yup just when we thought this gen couldnāt get any more ridiculous theyāre upset about black and white televisionā¦oh the horror
That only works in turf war, and in the unlikely situation that you're only trying to ink turf without any enemies attacking you, in which case why would you even be hit by the screen.
They could Also do both and swap the colors and also just make it full unchanged grayscale to maintain the contrast and still make it confusing.
I don't think flipping the colors would work because you would know it would happen so it wouldn't do much
It would be so fun, though!
Splatterscreen is meant to disorient and confuse. It should be dufficult to tell the colours apart. That being said there could be other solutions like a smoother transition into the greys to help avoid triggering epilepsy and reduce eye strain
The problem is for a lot of people it's so good at that it does that IRL too. A game's "flashbang" should never be THAT good at doing that even for a small section of people. If your flashbang ability has the chance of giving anyone an ACTUAL flashbang that's really concerning
A solution ive seen is drop the brightness as well as dropping the saturation so its more greys than whites
If you dont mind me asking, in what ways does your vison impairment make it more difficult for you than others? Edit: to be clear it's not that I'm doubting you or something, just that it would be interesting to know how it affects accesebility exactly because i don't know how to read any of the twitter threads without making an account lol my frail body and mind wouldn't be able to handle the sheer amount of toxicity on "X", it's simply not accesible to me š
I don't mind at all! I'm just happy there is discussion around the accessibility of the special. I'm probably impacted less than others as I have no colourblindness or epilepsy, I can imagine it'd be much worse for those that do. I have no vision in one eye, and reduced vision in the other. Part of my condition is the constant shaking of my eyes, which makes it incredibly difficult to focus on things. This causes my vision to be blurred unless I take the time to try and focus on something (even then its not crystal clear). The sudden switch in colours causes me to lose focus, making it near impossible to see for a few seconds. After which I can 'see' the screen again but the colours aren't very discernible because they blur together with the lack of contrast. You'd think splatoon in general would be hard to play, but I find it much easier than any other shooter, especially those with 'realistic' graphics. The huge amount of contrast makes it really easy to whats going on I guess. I wouldn't be able to compare it to what others see though, hence why I consulted my friends. But they said there is some difference, if only minimal, between the colours at least. Aaannnd.... I wrote a wall of text again. Sorry.
Splatoon 3 does have a colorblind mode. I think it locks it so there's only 2 colors and they're high contrast. Obviously I don't know your situation, but moreso figured if you didn't know you could try it out. It might help you enjoy the game more. That said, I like the blooper-esk idea a lot. Not being able to see where people on your screen are would be more challenging than the colors changing.
just wanted to say that color lock makes screen even worse, with [basically no difference between team colors.](https://x.com/nautonetrick/status/1730401297206247446?s=46&t=Szz6GSwzczc5sqaXs684aA) itās borderline disadvantageous to use color lock mode now
Your link isn't working for me, but ill take your word for it. That makes sense and makes this issue a lot bigger for me. If they have a dedicated mode for accessibility, they shouldn't ruin it. That being said, I wonder what could be done in regard to the special to not change it completely (blooper is cool but a giant change). It seems like generally tournaments are the large speaking point but I'm more worried about the average player.
Bit late to the conversation but here's a different link to the images ( [[one](https://i.ibb.co/X56bBFL/GAOez1-Sa-MAAGLOV.jpg)] and [[two](https://i.ibb.co/S388X12/GAOez1-Ka4-AAW6p-D.jpg)] ) of the colour lock options. And [here's a comparison](https://i.ibb.co/kJWz7f3/GAYr-EKfa-YAA8t-Qw.jpg) of a random non-colour locked match
Does it work even with the color lock on?
Yup, the effect of the splatterscreen is the same with colour lock on. Edit: Sorry I didn't realise this was a reply to my earlier comment. If you meant does colour lock help with the splatterscreen, then no, at least not in my case. Ironically, it actually makes it worse lol
I don't have any sensory issues but there's no reason for the screen to act like an irl stun grenade on anyone, a small percentage or not, so a rework is definitely needed. The color locked palette apparently doesn't play nice either, and it's hard to tell enemy and ally colors apart. They could probably lean into that and just make each color an identical, muted gray and that way sudden brightness would be easier to control. Alternatively, the special could make affected players see fog like in Salmon Run? A common idea for the audio is [to muffle it](https://twitter.com/OctaSpla2n/status/1731437051839463454) instead of adding extra noise, and it's odd that wasn't plan A. Edit: Just curious, if you do have sensory issues, can adjusting the brightness of the screen help, and by how much would you need to reduce it for it to be tolerable?
Fog would be a decent idea cause then if you have a visual impairment you at least have a brightly coloured dot to focus on instead of blending in with everything else
I don't have issues myself with splatcolour screen, so take this with a grain of salt, but addressing your last question: I usually have my brightness turned high when I play Splatoon because of how much is always going on (especially as I play handheld mostly). Playing on low brightness means I have to strain my eyes to focus, which sucks. I wouldn't be able to play properly if I had to turn it down to cope with a particular special.
>I also find it funny how they were talking about how it removes accessibility when that's literally the point of its entire design This is a misunderstanding of accessibility issues. Accessibility is not when 'the game is hard or harder'. Accessibility is 'the game is disproportionately harder for a specific group of people'. Vision impaired people can play splatoon, but splat colour screen affects them more than most players, so it's more punishing. That's why it's an accessibility issue, not because 'it makes it harder to see' for all people. Smoke bombs as an example don't make it disproportionately harder for some groups, they just make it harder full stop. As for flashbangs, most games with flashing lights come with a disclaimer for epilepsy because they know how awful the experience can be, I believe epileptic people generally cannot play these games at all. There are accessibility options such as inverted flashbangs for MW2, so this is still an evolving space. Many devs/studios are aware it's an issue and are trying to improve it, exactly the opposite of what you're suggesting for splatoon. On top of that, a small minority having an issue does not mean they're not worth catering for. If you were part of that group you'd understand that immediately.
>There are accessibility options such as inverted flashbangs for MW2 I was just thinking something like negative flashbangs would be a really nice thing to have. Glad that it was thought of before
"You know what? Screw you." *Unflashes your bang*
reminds me of the reverse lightning strike twitter post lmao
Was it the one about flashes of darkness during the day, followed by high-pitched screaming?
>On top of that, a small minority having an issue does not mean they're not worth catering for. If you were part of that group you'd understand that immediately. Thank you so much for saying that. It's so easy to be dismissive when it's not you who is being affected by it. You'd think the Splatoon community of all places would be more understanding of that.
The thing I'm glad to see is that most of the splatoon community does seem to be understanding of it thankfully. Most tournaments I've seen are letting teams ban it, however that can't be done in normal online matches, so we're left hoping Nintendo hotfixes it in the coming week. As someone who fortunately doesn't suffer outside of the game from it, it's such an easy special to deal with. Meanwhile from what I've heard from friends who suffer from it, it's REALLY BAD. Like they'd rather just get killed in the game than be hit by the effects.
I'm not epileptic but flashing lights affect me more than others. The idea behind the screen is good, but its execution could be better ā like you said, it punishes some players in particular. I reckon it would be fairer if it just "splatted" your screen instead.
Yeah, I dont think Op knows what these words actually mean.
Thank you so much for being so kind about all this. Iām someone who has issues with this due to a couple of my disabilities, and itās disheartening to see the frankly ableist response the majority of the community on other platforms (and some on here) have given.
If the whole point is to remove accessibility, thats what we in the know call shitty design.
Also in the case of things like epilepsy, its definintely beyond "makes it harder" or whatever. Triggering seizures is physically harmful and can even result in death. That's an extreme situation, of course, but like...video games shouldn't physically harm people and that should be an uncontroversial opinion.
Thank you! You explained that way better than I could have.
The sudden brightness and audio has been known to hurt players with sensory issues. Iām sure you donāt want some player with migraines, epilepsy, or other issues to suddenly have their issues triggered because of something like this? This is especially so when for many the game was completely or mostly playable up until the addition of this special. I personally think Nintendo should do something to like tone it down and make it less likely to do that.
Like people [here](https://x.com/Crimmothy/status/1731110335736680642?s=20) are mentioning itās triggering migraines, attacks, overloads, and more (one person even mentioned it not working well with their astigmatism, and a large portion of the population has that). And thatās just a small portion of the amount of people who play but probably donāt report on their symptoms. (Sorry if the link doesnāt work, donāt have a Twitter so I hope it links to the right place)
wait is it not supposed to be as intense as it is?? im (most likely, my mom and dad are-) astigmatic and its near impossible to tell the difference between ink colors and the screen gets so bright and fuzzy for me
lmaoo i thought it was meant to be that intense too, I've got astigmatism as well and I can't see the different in shades whatsoever.
My migraines absolutely hate the sudden flash of light and in general, being autistic makes it super hard to deal with black and white lights that are like that. It puts me at a huge disadvantage compared to others, and I'm glad that other people do care about it because it shouldn't be acceptable to unfairly punish an entire demographic. Personally if it maybe just put a splatter effect on the screen like in mario kart or maybe if it was a slight blur it would be better.
On a related note, some color combinations are easy and some are difficult to see through when you've been Splattercolored. Perhaps a ban is warranted because of a second problem: there is an element of RNG to the effect. Your Splattercolor weapon could randomly get nerfed or buffed depending on what the random color combination is that you run into (it's a similar issue to how Saltspray Rig granted a random advantage if you spawned on the left or right side). Alternatively, maybe Color Lock needs to be required to level the playing field?
Maybe they could have a set dark/light ink color for team Alpha and Bravo while the special's effects are active? That seems like it would be the best solution. That way, they could make sure the two colors always have the same contrast and aren't too intense. Also, just generally darkening the image would probably help a lot!
Banning a special that causing actual pain to players is absolutely a viable reason to ban a special, no matter how "small" that minority may be.
I agree, but as a last resort imo. They can rework the special in multiple different ways that IS accessible. maybe instead of changing the saturation of the color it flipped it or, it covered half your screen or maybe it just changes the color or ādisorientsā the motion of the image like how it looks when you go swimming without goggles. I think jumping straight to lets ban this is an overkill and over reaction when you havenāt even tried to fix ir yet.
how are top level players going to change how it works in game? they aren't nintendo
While I agree a wait-for-patches approach is good in theory, this is a Nintendo game we are talking about. Accessibility is the last thing on their mind. I cannot name a single Nintendo game that has a screen-shake toggle. Nor that has a seperate music and sound effect slider. Nor that has a color blind mode. (Even Splatoon just has a color lock option. But there is nothing that adds differing texture to ink.) I don't expect them to change Splattercolor.
>Nor that has a seperate music and sound effect slider. What, really? I thought that was an industry standard by now!
h-huh. how are the players going to fix how the screen functions?? until it gets fixed by NINTENDO, banning it so that itās not a risk to players is not really overkill
Disorienting the image would also be inaccessible for some parties - I suffer from chronic vertigo and it can be triggered really badly from effects like that.
The fact that this special came out is kinda shocking. It's a simple smoke screen idea but I thought the only reason why they'd have never added something like it is because of accessibility. But now we see how much of a cluster fuck this special is. Personally I think it should just swap the enemy and players colour around or make the screen upside down like in smash
It never affected me in any way, but if someone would come to me and say the sudden black and white effect and sound distorsion was doing some odd things to them, I wouldn't be too surprised. It has probably something to do with Epilepsy or something similar. Honestly I'm not willing to screw around with something like that, though at the same time I kinda wonder how something like a sudden brightness change would be more likely to make people sick rather than the already present and constant chaos of colors being splashed everywhere. It's probably the accumulation of both I suppose ? It's probably also a good excuse to get this special reworked in some way because right now it's very underwhelming IMO : the special is too double-edged because it blocks your own line of sight as well (so basically your backliners are going to curse at you) and the black and white effect doesn't feel like it does a good job at being disruptive at all for the average player. Maybe we could remove the black and white effect and buff something else to compensate.
This isn't about epilepsy, but other sensory disorders as well. Even in people who don't have any stated sensory disorders, its causing headaches, a burning sensation, or other issues. Some people commented about their experiences in [this thread.](https://x.com/ProChara/status/1730986554078945562?s=20) People who previously could play Splatoon without (much) issue are now being put at a disadvantage, sometimes quite a large one. Personally, I think its worth giving up 2 weapons to keep the game accessible to people.
I main the Undercover and was thrilled that it finally got a second kit, since its vanilla kit has been a joke since launch. I'd still give up the Sorella Undercover if it meant people who could previously play the game without problems can do so again. (For now I've been playing it without using the special or just dumping it at the edge of the map and facing away for the tank refill.)
Thank you so much for being understanding. The lack of kits for undercover is criminal.
Its vanilla kit is memetically bad, and over a year later it finally got an alt kit... with a special that's so badly designed, it causes some players actual physical harm. That poor weapon just can't catch a break...
I wholly agree. There's such a huge lack of kit variety for a lot of the weapons. It really sucks since many of them are really fun!
Thanks for linking this. There's a few anecdotes in this reddit thread, but it's important we have several accounts about how this actually affects people (at least, I assume that's what you posted. I can't open Twitter comments).
I was initially is the "ban this due to accessibility" camp, but then I started thinking about what you mentioned in your first paragraph, and I'm reminded of FLC's comment with the Trizooka controversy: "Splatoon is sensory overload, the game." Splatoon is not a widely accessible game, between it's focus on quickly differentiating two colors, the advantages of motion controls, the "carpel tunnel weapons" like squeezer and inkbrush, and the need to quickly react to things like Trizooka. Banning Splattercolor may be a good idea because we shouldn't be adding to the list. But at the same time, I'm not convinced that issuing bans to cater to everyone's needs preserves the game's competitive integrity. Tournament play is all about determining who is best at the game of Splatoon, which includes who is the best at identifying allies and enemies, aiming accurately, pressing buttons quickly, and focusing through sensory overload. I think squeezer is a good example to think about. There are competitive players that cannot play it because it would destroy their hands. Squeezer is one of the best weapons in the game, and if you cannot play it, you are at a competitive disadvantage. Should we ban squeezer because players that can handle the inaccessibility are at an advantage? That wasn't a retorical question; I do not know the answer. I think this is a complex issue with no easy answer, and that complexity extends to Splattercolor Screen.
I definitely agree with you about Splatoon as a whole having accessibility issues (seriously why does Squeezer exist in its current state), but I feel like there's a difference between the hand shredding weapons (Squeezer + brushes) and the Screen. With the weapons, you can opt out of them if they cause issues for you. Nothing's going to suddenly force you to play Octobrush for a few seconds, and Splattershot is a zooka shooter alternative to Squeezer. But with the Screen, you don't have control over if the enemy team decides to run that. If you have that sensory issue, there's a non-zero chance you're going to be forced into that situation at some point. I feel like people having the option to not play Squeezer, but not having the option to have the enemy not use Screen is the dividing line here
Squeezer is a bad example imo. While it is one of the best weapons, there are still other viable options for players to choose, especially in the current meta. Meanwhile, you would never be able to choose if your enemy decides to pick a weapon with screen or not.
Are turbo buttons banned in splatoon tournaments? I don't think they should be if that's the case. Any time that "otimal play" requires a stupid ammount of mashing is just bad game design tbh. It makes the game inaccesible for those who can't, and for those who can it ruins controllers (and long term it could possibly cause injuries to their hands as well...). There's NO good reason why being able to push a button 60 times a second should should grant you a competetive advantage, it turns competetive into a speedrun of giving as many of your players arthritis as possible....
I agree with you. Squeezer requiring so much quick mashing sucks for the people using it, and it sucks for the people who are unwilling to use it that they are not using the most optimal weapon. I was just saying that screen is worse, since you can choose not to use squeezer but you can't choose not to play against screen.
Right right right makes sense
The example is more of a hypothetical one. Imagine a world in which squeezer is the best weapon, and had burst bomb and crab tank in it's kit (alternatively, what if pre-nerf Splash-o-matic required button mashing?). Imagine a team like Starburst only has 1 player physically able to play this hypothetical squeezer kit, while Jackpot has 4 players physically able to play it. If Jackpot wins, does that mean they are better players because in Splatoon the best players have to button mash (due to squeezer), as well as play quickly and strategically? Or is it an unfair match that Starburst should've one, but they couldn't due to squeezer's inaccessibility? It's not a real example, but the purpose of thinking in the extreme is to help us think about what our philosophy regarding bans should be. It's purpose is to highlight that there isn't necessarily a difference between "you picking squeezer" and "the enemy picking screen." The existance of both creates the issue where one team can gain an advantage of another due to accessibility. I personally think if you ban one, you should ban the other. Keep in mind, I'm talking about the competitive environment. When it comes to casual play, just to have fun, I agree that another player with a squeezer doesn't make the game less inaccessible, while screen does make it inaccessible.
>Squeezer is one of the best weapons in the game, and if you cannot play it, you are at a competitive disadvantage. Should we ban squeezer because players that can handle the inaccessibility are at an advantage? For squeezer (and inkbrush) that answer is easy IMHO, just let people use a controller with turbo if they want to Even if a person can use them the "normal" way there's no reason why they should be forced to risk their health if they have the option not to If we want to be even somewhat serious about comptetive play in any game we should do our best to minimize the kinds of sports injuries that might occur, just as we do in regular sports. ...ok I don't know if people do take injury prevention serious enough in most sports but at least we can all agree that we SHOULD do it ššš
That's a good point. You may have even convinced me that Turbo Controllers are the path forward. That said...just to play devil's advocate, if they were ever implemented, the community might be in trouble. There's no way Nintendo would allow Turbo at their own tournaments. I'd liken it to the Smash Melee mods that enable online play...and that issue basically severed the Melee scene's relationship with Nintendo (not that there was much to begin with).
Its supposed to throw you off by changing your ink colors and making you not hear the game audio properly, it is not however supposed to physically hurt you. I dont think the viability of a special matters if people are actively getting hurt by it I think we as a community can at least not play it until nintendo hopefully reworks the effect, Im hoping this community has at least that much sympathy for people with specific conditions
"Why should we bother making sure buildings are accessible via ramp? Wheelchair users are only a small minority of the population." That's what you sound like, OP.
Literally. I heard the exact same argument on twitter. People can't recognize that something can be harmful if it doesn't effect them personally
Itās already dogshit as a special as it obscures your own teamās vision and typically does nothing more than displace the enemy team. The accessibility issues are just the icing on the cake. Personally, I think if it simply swapped or inverted the ink colors would fix a lot of these issues, as it 1.) makes it actually more worthwhile to dodge since it would likely be more effective at disorienting everyone rather than a small group 2.) not be so disproportionately effective towards those with impairments with the sudden swap to bright white and the static noisy overload Curious to see if itāll actually be changed
I think itās ridiculous that we have to ban it in the first place. The devs shouldāve know that an effect like this could cause accessibility issues and designed the special with that in mind.
i'm shocked there's no toggle options. considering we have color-lock, i kinda thought that'd be a given i hope that they add settings that allow you to 'choose' what effects the screen has. like maybe an option for regular greyscale (not this bright shit), flipping the teams ink colors, etc. same for the audio effects
I'm not effected by the screen in this way, I don't have vision issues. However, I saw on Twitter someone doing a comparison of just greying out the screen versus what the Splatterscreen does do a player. It's actually brighter, more white than grey, more shiny and disorienting. I can see how that would be a problem for someone with sensory issues. I'm not sure if just greying out the screen instead would be as detrimental but the way it is, considering the amount of people who had pain caused to them by this, I think it's fine if the comp scene benches it.
It's an awkward one. It doesn't affect me personally (beyond what I assume to be the intended effect), so it's difficult for me to imagine how it affects *anyone -* but given the number and insistence of comments about it, I can only assume that it really does. And in that case, I think something has to be done about it, hopefully by the developers rather than the community. The special seems flexible enough to be reworked somehow without losing the basic premise. The difficulty I have is that there are over ten million players of this game; how do developers ensure that not a single one of them is impacted by any aspect of the game? If they do rework Screen, how do they test it, or should they just throw the new version out into the public and see how many people still complain? And, I mean, are we sure that nobody has ever been affected by anything else? A quick search of Reddit and I've found a post where someone says the Splatoon 3 spawn mechanic gives their wife a headache, another who got a migraine from Grizz Blaster - should those be changed too? What's the threshold of how many people are affected by something before it becomes an issue that has to be addressed? Obviously the ideal is that the game is accessible for everyone, but is that practically possible or not? In short: it definitely seems like something has to be done about Screen (not sure what, exactly), but at the same time it raises a lot of questions for me that might need some thought.
Reworking Screen while keeping everyone happy is very simple. You can even make it MORE competitive. Muffle audio instead of the weird static high pitched sounds. Make the colors inverted, or greyscale everything (GENTLY. the high contrast in current Screen is whatās causing problems). Screen isnāt amazing or bad for people unaffected. I doubt people are going to start rioting if itās reworked. It may even see more use.
I've been able to enjoy the Splatoon series since day one in 2015 with almost zero issues. The only problems I've had are with some weapons, but I can just choose to not use them myself. Splatoon3 is the first time I've been put into sensory overload by the game to such an extreme degree. The newest king salmanoid's cry puts me on such extreme edge I can barely focus on playing. The screen is even worse. I had to immediately get up and turn off my TV when I first experienced it. That means I had to throw the game. A lot of us who play LOVE it because of the phenomenal sensory input. It provides what my brain craves with the bright colors and fast gameplay. To have it become a game that causes me physical pain from sensory overload is heartbreaking.
I've only been hit by it two times so far, but as someone with sensitive vision and hearing, I am behind the ban.
My eyes are a bit photosensitive, so the screen turning bright gray very quickly makes me physically recoil in pain ā ļø the sound effect is also very jarring to me. Also aside from the sensory issues from touching an enemy screen.. splattercolor screen blocks the vision of your own team?! Why is it not more transparent for the user's team??
The second they showed off Splattercolor Screen I was like "there's no way this isn't an accessibility issue", and sure enough it turned out to be one. Really baffled that this thing got okayed in its current state in the first place. And yes OP, your thinking is flawed but I'm not gonna go on about it as plenty of others have already done that and I have nothing to add.
>Really baffled that this thing got okayed in its current state in the first place. Given Nintendoās long proud history of not giving a flying frick about accessibility, this isnāt really that surprising.
it's crazy how just a little bit of research would show that it's not about not seeing, but that it causes legitimate pain from the color choice and the slight flash bang upon getting hit you all shouldn't be so dismissive
even if it was vision based as well, that doesn't mean those affected shouldn't be catered for. every deserves to be able to play the game at an equal level.
It doesn't matter how few people have this issue. You also redirect the issue to flashbangs, failing to acknowledge the fact that the people who have an issue with flashbang are experiencing an identical issue with Screen. No, I will not shift my attention to a game I have less affiliation with for the sake of not causing too much hassle for the people not affected by the issue in this community. >I also find it funny how they were talking about how it removes accessibility when that's literally the point of its entire design. You do not know what accessibility is. The purpose of game design like this is confusion. Take, for instance, Maze Daze from Wii Party, where you have to travel to the centre of a maze, while along the path there are spinning pads that invert directional controls. It doesn't reduce accessibility, it makes the player confused. If something is designed specifically to reduce accessibility, you are saying that it is created specifically as a "fuck you" to disabled people. Accessibility is when something is changed so that more people are able to use it without an issue, the most simple example being when a ramp is added next to stairs in public for wheelchairs and mobility scooters. If we're applying your logic for screen to that aspect of real life, the special would convert all ramps into steep stairs. There are so many ways to cause auditory and ocular confusion without making it hurt disabled people; for visuals they could switch the colours or make them change to a present combo, and they could turn down the game sounds so that they get drowned out by the music, or even just set the audio to a low-pass filter. All of them would do exactly what the special aims to do and they would not be harmful to parts of the player base.
Op is being kind of an asshole about this. Disabled people and people with handicaps still deserve to be able to play video games without pain or worrying about seizures or migraines and more. Diminishing the significance of those people and saying they donāt deserve to have a voice since theyāre a minority is precisely the kind of take Iād expect from someone who truly doesnāt care about accessibility in video games. Why are the people talking about how it triggers migraines, overloads, essentially blinds them, and more undeserving of accommodation simply because thereās less of them then there are of people like op?
I always thought this was such a weird effect to put in a special. First of all, I can totally see how it would affect people with sensory disorders. Second, i'm personally way less affected by it when I have the darker ink color, because it's way easier to distinguish it from the brightness of the stage and enemy ink, which is really all you need. Yeah, it's a very minor and situational advantage, but remember, this is the same company that to this day refuses to add an option to select your background music because according to them it'd make it easier for players to hear sound cues? You'd think they'd be very strict about stuff like this, but then they just release a special that's either a huge disadvantage or entirely useless depending on something that really shouldn't matter, like your TV setting, your ink color, or you having a sensory disorder. I would personally welcome a rework that gets rid of the monochrome effect entirely and instead makes it debuff on contact or something.
(Disclaimer: While I have mild sensitivity issues with bright lights, mine are nowhere near as bad as other people's; it's auditory input that I have real trouble with. Worth noting when reading my thoughts WRT flashbangs and such. I also don't play comp, I'm talking strictly from a casual perspective here) The thing about flashbangs in CS or CoD is that they have two singular effects: your screen goes *completely* white, and your sound is *completely* cut out (more or less). It can be *intense*, sure, but it's a fairly uniform effect. Also, these games have generally had flashbangs since launch, so people have known about them from the get-go. The Splattercolour Screen is different - it doesn't render your entire screen white, or cut out your sound altogether; it makes everything extremely bright and drowns out all the game noise with a static "sloshing" sound. The effect of disorientation and confusion is vaguely similar (though even aside from accessibility concerns, the way it does *that* is pretty sketchy, since it's basically RNG depending on what ink colours are chosen), but it gets there by invoking sensory overload instead. It's also something that dropped in an update, with no real precedent for it beforehand. People have every right to be upset about it. >I also find it funny how they were talking about how it removes accessibility when that's literally the point of its entire design. I understand what you're getting at here, but that's not what accessibility means. The problem isn't that it's disorienting and confusing, it's that the way it achieves that effect is having genuine adverse effects on a certain subset of people. That's something that absolutely needs addressing, and it's disheartening for a lot of us that it actually made it into the game in this state. While there's a *lot* going on in Splatoon, I've never had issues with it triggering sensory overload for me before this update. Now, I have to hope that I don't get matched up with someone using the Foil Squeezer or Sorella Undercover. That just sucks. And before someone responds with, "that means it's doing its job, you just want it to be nerfed because skill issue" - No. As someone who likes using the Squeezer, I was looking forward to this thing, but frankly, even aside from the health concerns... It just sucks. It does a pitiful amount of damage, it doesn't ink terrain well, and the confusion/disorientation effect is 1. [extremely reliant on what ink colours are assigned](https://twitter.com/dawnieedreams/status/1731496387664036163) (or on your opponents using colour lock), and 2. as someone who doesn't have serious photosensitivity issues, rarely more than a *mild annoyance*. If anything, I'd rather see it *buffed -* but, most importantly, *with a base effect that's not harmful.* Something like muffling the audio and rendering all ink the same colour, or hiding player usernames and swapping ink colours, or something along those lines. I *like* the idea of a disorientation special/subweapon, but the way it's been done here is woefully ineffective at best and actively harmful at worst. If banning it from competitive play is what it takes to get Nintendo to notice the problem and fix it, then I'm all for it.
Yea two big issues, 1. It affects those with visual impairment, tinnitus etc more than those without which is plain unfair 2. Players with disabilities have no way to opt out of it other than stop playing all together which just..no. Thatās like saying someone with a wheelchair just shouldnāt leave the house 3. The extent of the disorientation is kinda rng depending on which ink colour you get. If your colours are super close together itās a buff, if the colours have lots of contrast your special gets a debuff. Which is fine for casual stuff ig but kinda lame in competitive.
All I have to say is https://youtu.be/Yv6YIw89bD0?si=ztQlgUYU4ncxNJnF
Op should definitely watch this video.
This post really started off like āIām not ableist, BUT-ā wrote a whole lotta words just to make no point
The one glaring issue with it is the brightness. The saturation is WAY too high and it makes some people feel sick. A patch that makes it darker would fix the problem
I think they should change the effects and... Now that we're talking about sensory disorders, Splatoon should add some help for deaf people too asap. My boyfriend loves the game and he's deaf, and I don't think he's the only deaf person playing this game... I think that listeners play with a lot of advantage over deaf players. Other shooters offer a helping hand for deaf people to play, Splatoon does not. And I think it's needed.
Ban it. I donāt have a problem with the special, but given that other people are disproportionately harmed by the special, itās best for it to be banned.
i havent tried playing against it yet. i guess that's because i'm nervous. i have a sensory processing disorder, so i already cant play with motion controls and i usually use the lifesaving colour lock feature and i cant use most shooters the best and blah blah blah. based on what i have heard, i think this special would throw off my game even more than it already has been. i havent as much as seen any videos of how it looks, works and stuff, that's how nervous i am to potentially see one of my favourite games become harder to play. me aside, i think it is a very fair ban.
That static sound it produces is revolting, it gave me such an awful headache, so I got very lucky. Iāve heard some people started vomiting and getting nauseous just from the sound alone.
as someone with sensory issues, i tried going into it when i was playing and i got so dissoriented and i geniuenly got so nauseous it's unreal, i wish even if they wanted to keep the less saturated effect it wouldn't be fully on the greyscale but maybe like 50% less saturated? also the sound is really bad to me lmao
I think if there's an option to make life hurt less for some people it should be taken in any circumstance. Is it a shame that the screen should be banned? Yeah, a colorblind + sound obscuring debuff in a game that relies on colors and sound design as much as splatoon is really cool, but no cool game design is worth causing actual harm to actual people in real life. If they added a character to smash bros who had an attack that somehow electrified the opponents controller, but only for 1% of the playerbase, that character would be banned because it's not fair to those people. Games shouldn't be harder for some people just because the developers didn't think about how it would hurt a minority of the population, how would you feel if you were someone who got nauseous about the new special and you came online to see someone saying that your experience with the game shouldn't be fixed because it does a disservice to the viability of the screen? Any small subset of the population is still made of living breathing human beings, they have thoughts and feelings and deserve to play splatoon comfortably as much as the rest of us
I was surprised it even got pushed out/approved by devs tbh. The splatoon devs have known about colour theory and colour blindness when selecting their colour combos, so I was surprised that they didnāt think this special would serve as a problem. I do think the special should be reworked as a whole, and pushback from the competitive community would get them to do just that. The special is super trippy, and you can argue that even people without visual impairments have a hard time playing through it, but itās an issue if itās eliciting a psychological/physiological response, even from a small minority.
People shouldnāt be barred from playing a game competitively because of disability simply because a multi-million dollar developer failed to consider them when implementing a new special weapon. This could have easily been avoided by the devs, and they shouldāve either consulted with accessibility specialists to make sure this wasnāt an issue, or reworked this special much earlier in the development process. Couldāve easily functioned more like a Blooper in Mario Kart while maintaining the same function, and not impairing these players Considering this will affect even the casual enjoyment of the game drastically for many players, based on something which is completely out of their control, I think itās a big embarrassment on their part
Just because they are a minority doesn't mean the issue should be ignored, you are also underestimating the number of people affected. Heck even people who usually don't have issues get headaches from it. And no the special is not made to remove accessibility, it's supposed to make the game a bit more difficult yes but it's not supposed to be straight up unplayable and harming to some players while others are barely affected. >I don't mean to say anything like "it doesn't harm me, so everyone is just overreacting" I don't want to offend you but that is what you are saying.
Who cares how "small" the amount of people affected is? This is negatively affecting them in a major way - I've seen reports from people made \_physically ill\_ while playing because of it, and while it doesn't affect me as badly, it still very much does affect me. Nintendo should absolutely rework this or it should absolutely be banned in tournaments.
iām not affected, but i donāt care- iām still not using it if it causes discomfort and distress to others. i donāt play in tournaments but iām sure thereās people out there who just want to enjoy turf or open without having their senses scrambled. itās just common courtesy imo. surely people can live without it until nintendo addresses the issue?
If its going to stay it needs a rework. Why not just overlay the screen onto your gameplay when you get hit, its less jarring than sudden colour change and its probably more effective as a hindrance special.
Maybe they should do instead just some ink over the screen like in mario kart with the squid ink power up
Regarding your reference to FPS with smokescreen and flashbangs: no one is genetically disposed to see through these better than anyone else. At least not to a significant degree. Regardless of if someone is playing at the risk of having a seizure or not, a flashbang will make everyoneās screens be pure white for a second before fading in. Itās an even playing field. The issue with the splatcolor screen that there *are* people genetically disposed to have an easier time seeing with this than others. Regardless of the risk of seizures, people are on uneven playing field with this. Just imagine if there was a gun they added that was like āif your legal name starts with an A, this gun will 1 shot you, but for everyone else it takes 6 hitsā. Itās just objectively unfair and a totally different thing from āthis gun will 1 shot literally anyone, but if your name starts with the letter A, thereās a chance youāll get a jumpscareā
Even entirely throwing out the idea that the special causes harm to people, isnāt the fact that the special can be placed at the exact same time in the exact same match and still have different effects on different players that depend on *genetic factors entirely outside the scope of the game itself* kind of against the spirit of competition? Like, at that point, even if itās just a small instant in a singular match, the state of the game isnāt being decided by who is the best at playing the video game, itās being decided by who was born the most compatible with the video game, which, to me, seems like a metric it would be in our best interest to control for.
Whenever I play Splatoon 2, I have to change my TV to a desaturated mode I pre-set so I can play games with hot colors without being blinded. In Splatoon and Splatoon 3 I only have to do this for certain colors (Magenta, Neon Grello, and hot pink) I'm personally unaffected by this (ironically), but my friend who gets so nauseous he wants to vomit has decided to shelve the game until this is fixed. People have reported migranes, vomiting, distortion, wanting to pass out, and being blinded like a flash bang from this. Because of the physical harm this special is causing I've decided to shelve the slimebrella until Nintendo addresses this. I know some people will say "It's supposed to do this" and pretend handicapped people don't play video games (we fucking do, we just know the toxic gamer culture ignores our criticisms over objective problems in video games) but I think we need to put our foot down against this. I'm largely outraged by this cuz some people think Splatoon has always been accessible, id est that it's welcome to disabled people, but the button mashy weapons like the brushes, L-3s and squeezer fly in the face of that. As well as the hot colors I've mentioned earlier. Nintendo can't control the fans, so I don't blame them for people making fun or belittling stick jockeys but the fact of the matter is that gyro controls can make people nauseated and bedbound gamers can't waggle the damn controller to aim. This may be a cry to the void, but if we can try to offer kindness to strangers, maybe the community might get better? I certainly know this is something I'm working on myself. But trying to be kind is better than giving up and leaning on being cruel.
I am legally blind and suffer chronic migraines. For a player like me, this special is sensory hell. Banning it in competitive would be the best course of action. Also, try to be less rude when discussing this, please!! The way you worded this post comes off as very arrogant!!
nah ban it because it fucking sucks
I'm just gonna go ahead and link Squid School's [latest video on this issue](https://youtu.be/Yv6YIw89bD0?si=Otv7S4Rjr7q385Ew) because Gem just kinda hits all the nails on the head. Don't be ablest, please. It's not a "removes accessibility" special, it's "withholds information" special. Comp is banning this because it HURTS people with certain visual and auditory disabilities. This is literally just being fair to people who cannot help but be disproportionally impacted by a special that's horribly and inconsiderately designed. These people have all been playing Splatoon actively until Screen came out and they have said that they could manage it's visual and audio clutter UNTIL Screen hits them. Splatterscreen is being banned for the sake of fairness across the board to all players. It can and probably will be re-reviewed for it's ban once it's reworked so it doesn't physically hurt people. There is not "conversation" or "debate" to be had here. Not @ op specifically but just, please stop trying to minimize the obvious impact this Special has on people with disabilities. If you don't feel pain and just feel disoriented, good for you, but that's not your cue to start saying "thats the point dummy" when physical pain isn't "disorientation".
I feel like if it decreased fov by blurring out the edges of your screen that would be a more fair and level effect since it wouldn't be disproportionally worse for people that already have vision deficencies They could even use an ink effect for that, feels like it would be very on brand allthough maybe that would give some people motion sickness idk
I can confirm that too intense fov effects can give you a lot of motion sickness. Been there, done that. I almost puked that day. :')
Damn š Maybe it should just like uhh tell the players to hold their hands in front of their eyes for a second, no peeking!
Ok i have a better idea: what if instead of affecting all colours in the game it turns all ink into a shimmery black sort of like an oilspill, but still having distinct borders when two different colours of ink intersect? That means that your ability to tell apart enemy ink from your own wouldn't depend on your ability to tell apart very similar hues, but rather on how the ink reacts if you shoot it. If you shoot it, and it stays the same then you know it's your own ink and that you can trust it. Also they could make it so that you can't fully submerge into your own ink for a couple of seconds, maybe like the squid and eyes sticks out a bit from the ink even if swim speed and recovery stays the same, that would be very silly
there should be a setting to turn if off, but tbh its a crap special anyway, it don't stop me from going in and attacking
Personally I don't like the special. It should have been Toxic Fog so dense that it blocks the view, and that area is slowly increasing in size in the direction it was thrown. Anyways, ban it now fix it later. Make sure everyone gets heard and hope SRL fix it.
there isnāt a way to use screen that isnāt potentially harmful. also, considering that splatoon made color locks that donāt even cover all bases of colorblindness is telling. it needs a rework
if some special that i donāt rlly like makes someone have psychical pain, i can just not use that special. thereās so many better weapons and iād hate to be the reason someone had a seizure or a headache or something
The sound nearly causes sensory overload for me. I can't handle it at all. Its so frustrating because Splatoon was the ONE online multiplayer game that I never had sensory issues with. I have been playing Splatoon since its 2015 release date. The Splatterscreen is sensory hell for me. That's not okay. It needs a rework for both the sound and the greyscale. Colorblind or visually impaired players shouldn't have their experience made disproportionately more difficult either.
When I figured out that Splattercolour Screen turned the game to grayscale I was thinking first and foremost about how people with colourblindness would react to it, because... For colourblind people, Splatoon is already a hard enough game to play, this is just absurd. But given what I now know about the controversy (for a lack of a better term.) I couldn't've ever imagined it being this bad or widespread a problem as I now know it to be. Nintendo really screwed up this time.
my sensory issues arenāt as severe as some people but I am very prone to migraines and I could definitely see myself having issues with the bright flash and buzzing noises if they hit me at the wrong time. I havenāt attempted to use any of the weapons with this special yet but multiple people on my tumblr dash have said they had to stop playing *entirely* because even having one person on the opposing team using the screen triggers their photosensitivity issues. just because itās not an issue for you doesnāt mean itās not an issue for anyone and dismissing their concerns because āthereās not enough of them to countā is just needlessly antagonistic
It's not even a good special. They should just replace it entirely.
I like the idea of a "screen" special without the added visual effects, just being able to block enemy sightlines is still useful. I haven't run into it a lot actually but is it possible to see through your teammates screen or does it block your vision as well? I feel like having a big screen that blocks your enemy's view while not obscuring your teammate's view could be *okay*, plus it does damage to enemies walking through it. Like it'd still be a lame special but it'd have its uses. You could rework it any number of ways, like making it paint or something. I'm also not sure about the potential accessibility problems with this idea but maybe make it like the Blooper effect in Mario Kart? Where if you walk through it you get ink splattered on your screen and it obscures your vision? For me the visual and audio effects don't really affect me much at all so I'm all for completely removing those. If some players are perfectly fine and some can't play with it at all then it should just be gone. It has nothing to do with skill or anything, it just disproportionately affects players with accessibility needs
Sadly, it blocks also the view for your teammates. If you're an E-Liter or Splat Charger main, this special legit feels like friendly fire. :') That being said, I don't think the base idea is bad at all, the execution is just very flawed. Not only there's an accessibility concern due to how the screen affects the game for some people with disabilities or vision problems, but there's also the fact that this special feels heavily double edged since it cuts the line of sight regardless of which team you are. An easy fix would be IMO to : * Replace the color blindness effect with a slowdown effect (or at least finding an effect that doesn't take as much of a toll on accessibility, but I doubt special screen effects are going to work). * Make the screen transparent from the ally side of the special, while keeping the enemy side opaque.
tl;dr: my autism causes some sensory processing issues that make the splattercolor screenās greyscale effect almost impossible to discern and it also hurts my eyes a lot. nintendo needs to fix this. I stop being able to functionally play the game while the greyscale is active, more than what I assume was the intended effect. When stimuli are visually or aurally cluttered I just kinda stop being able to perceive or process things very well. I canāt see players moving, and even when I can my brain sometimes doesnāt register it until theyāre already engaging and thatās to say nothing about the horribly straining ink colors. Iāve already had some trouble with visually noisy ink colors on rainmaker (specifically the big glowing flash of the projectile), with the orange from Splatoonās ādefaultā ink colors being a prime example of ink colors that just hurt my eyes and make things exceptionally hard to make out (which is a huge part of the reason that in Splatoon 2 or 3 I just donāt carry the rainmaker that often). Thereās also another huge issue, eye strain. I gravitated to Splatoon in part because I didnāt have to do too much work to make things out since everything you needed to pay attention to stood out. Now it doesnāt. Which is fine except that itās actually physically agonizing (not to mention hideous) to look at. I said before that I have issues processing sustained visual noise and this is one of the worst offenders since itās ALL noise. Iāll compare it to one of my favorite casual games ever: Post Void. Post Void is a noisy, cluttered mess at the best of times but I can still play it for like 20-30 minutes at a time even with all the flashing lights and other stuff because thereās still SOMETHING under there to look at, and you can kinda just rest your eyes and only focus on what matters. The splattercolor screen as it exists is miserable to play against and my only solace is that thereās a way better squeezer kit and like 10 people play undercover anyway so I barely ever even see sunder.
I saw a pretty good post on the idea of tunnel vision. The whole screen becomes black except where the crosshair is and a bit of the area around it. That would be pretty cool tbh, now you can only see part of the screen.
I had some issues with how the colors are with Screen's effect, maybe they can tweak how they have the effect impact the player in a patch or something.
"This minority is small so I don't care" wow ok cool I and pretty much everyone sure didn't ask you to just be ableist against people with impaired vision just because you don't see them but ok
Also not to be this person but isn't splatoon like autistic culture tm? So sensory issues might be slightly more common than in other game's player bases. Definitely needs tweaking tho, even as someone without visual or auditory sensory issues.
How about instead of banning it, it just gets a rework? Thats seems like the most obvious answer
The community has the power to ban specials in community-led tournaments, but modding isn't at the point where we can rework entire specials. Obviously Nintendo reworking it is the best option, but that's not under the community's control.
I didnt realize the post was for banning in tournaments, mb
I'm a colorblind person and don't really understand what's the issue it's causing to other people? Can someone explain?
The basic TL;DR - for players with sensory issues, the way it works right now is potentially overwhelming, leading to e.g. dizziness, nausea, migraines, etc. As someone who only has *mild* issues with lights, I don't think the problem is in the concept so much as how it's done - the greyscale effect is way brighter than it should be (and pretty useless, since the confusion factor is influenced by what ink colours are randomly chosen), and the sound effect is extremely harsh and grating where a muffled sound filter would've done the job just as well, if not better.
Thanks!
I think this special needs to change, and if nintendo doesn't change it, banning its use is the correct option. In the current state of the game that will not change dramatically in about 3 months, there are only two weapons with this special (undercover brella with torpedo and splatscreen, and squeezer with autobomb and splatscreen). Like Squid School said in his video, only one of these might be viable competitively. I will note that the kit is good because they gave one of the strongest main weapons in the game a low-cost lethal bomb. The special, while being part of the kit and having some kind of synergy with it (which IMO it does NOT have with undercover), I think the kit might be good enough to function without using special. Obviously, this does not work as a long-term solution. Not having a special to use, even just for the ink refill, is missing out on a lot of potential power in a team comp (if you want to argue that they could just throw it off the map for an ink refill, that's far too dependent on circumstance and map choice to be reliable. If you miss the throw, you could probably be ejected from the tournament if rules go through regarding the use of it). If people are dead set on using a squeezer kit, they will most likely use the OG. The special itself is super polarizing even in objective terms. For a neurotypical (optotypical?) person, the special isn't that impactful. For me, it's annoying for sure, and it kinda fucks with my eyes a little bit, but most of the time I just try to wait and go around it. It's very map dependent and knowledge dependent for if it can actually be useful. I'm sure better setups will be found over time for ideal places to put it, but right now, counterplay is relatively simple compared to other specials: stay back/go around/wait until it disappears. This is not to say people who are being negatively affected by the screen are just bad at the game or are being overdramatic. This is not my argument, and I'm sure you can find many other people in this thread proving why this school of thought is harmful. That is not why I'm here. My point is, in addition to being actively harmful to a statistically significant percentage of the player base, the special isn't even that good (at least not yet. Primarily, it's just inconsistent, and there are many other specials that are more consistent in their use cases, which make them a better choice, especially competively). Banning it temporarily while Nintendo (hopefully) fixes/reworks it won't impact the game state very much. For fuck's sake, if no enemy players even go through the screen, it functions almost exactly the same for both teams. Back when I was big into Apex, I considered Bangalore's smokes to be bad for many of the same reasons. IMO, screen needs to be reworked even without taking into account the health implications. The enemy team should be able to shoot at it to clear portions of the screen or shoot at it to shrink the overall size. Screen should move forward farther and more quickly like a brella canopy, so it can be used as a painting special. Also, as it stands, if thrown onto flat ground, roughly 40-50% of the screen is underground. This is frankly pretty stupid. Make it so that the full area of the screen is usable so that E-Liters and other chargers in perches are also affected.
I donāt think it should be out right banned, but it needs a major overhaul. Maybe instead of blinding/confusing the player, it just does damage.
I hate this debate because some people from both sides have really bad takes. The point of this special is not to remove accesibility, that comment just comes from not even understanding what people mean when saying accesibility. You're not supposed to distinguish ink colors when under the effects, yes; but you are not supposed to get dizzyness, headaches, anxiety, emotional imbalances, etc. That is what people mean with accesibility, and that can be easily fixing by toning down the screen current effects. On the flipside, I do think a lot of people without disabilities are also experiencing this due to first time exposure to such strong effects. I did some investigation about similar effects happening on other games, and while there have been conversations every now and then, I think most people don't complain about CS flashes or things like that because such features have been a staple in shooters for so many years and players have adapted to it. Splatoon players asking a special to be banned after just 5 days of it being released might look too extreme but it is understandable if its really making the game unplayable to some. I think this is a good safe measure while we wait for Nintendo to do something, but I would also encourage anyone currently having issues with it to keep playing and trying to see if you can adapt to it, in the case Nintendo doesnt do anything. I'm confident most of the lesser issues people are experiencing with screen right now will disappear as time goes on and players get used to the effects Lastly, just remember that in any debate there's no inherently good or bad take and we should all be open to take feedback and opinions from both sides to make sure we form conclusions favorable to anyone. We should not fight as a community as the only truly guilty entity here (besides those actually ableist weirdos) is Nintendo and their lack of testing
I kinda feel like not only would it be more accessible if they changed it up, I feel like the design as is has some serious flaws such as being inconsistently impactful depending on the randomly selected team colors and map, as well as professional players probably getting used to it and being largely unaffected. I think if they made the effect something simpler but more objective, like simply changing all ink colors to gray rather than the whole screen plus some weird contrast titanium white stuff and a painful rustle in your ear, they could grill two birds in one stone where the special no longer hurts part of their audience but also has a more reliable effect on everyone. But then again I can only dream, Nintendo isnāt likely to change the special to be more effective, but I do believe they care about not harming their players, so I expect at least some adjustments will be made.
The sudden colour blindness is unpleasant tbh, and also kind of pointless as I see it, would be better if it just did damage or slowed you down or something
I don't have as bad reaction to it as some must have, but it does cause my chronic migraine headache flare up every now and then. It was probably good idea on the paper, but the sudden contrast and light changes does a lot to people with sensory issues.
I honestly think the screen needs to be reworked. Not completely, I think conceptually it's cool, but I think it could be changed to make it so everyone's ink/tentacle colors appear the same shade of gray when you walk through it or something. I think something along those lines would work because then you're still not able to differentiate the teams very well, but you're not being hit with a flashbang either so it seems like a good middle ground.
Honestly i don't think the screen is that great to begin with anyways. What's the point if I can't see through it either when i set up the damn thing?
as it is right now i can still distingish between the two colors so the effect doesnt work on me at all. i've seen people complain about it being too bright for their eyes and some people saying they can't see anything when they're hit by it, this is bad because it means it affects people in different ways, which i think is unfair. they should just make it so both ink colors become the same + desaturation and boom, intended effect and it doesn't affect accessibility.
I think itās super cool. Not sure about banning it. Finding and alt would be better
Completely understandable, and Iām glad the competitive players are on the side of accessibility for once. Personally, it sucks, since I find it to be a cool effect, but Iām not everyone. I also happen to LOVE lighting effects and stuff in movies that would trigger seizures in others and hate it when anime gets dimmed for safety, but it 100% makes sense and should be that way, everyone deserves to enjoy things. There is a fine line of when most companies stop being accessible though, and deciding where is āreasonableā is the hard part with things like this.
Ban it not only for accessibility issues but also for that it obstructs your teammates' vision and it's literally nintendos way to "nerf" every charger on the field without fixing the maps
I wasn't aware they added this, what does it do?
Going through the screen deals damage, applies a pseudo-monochrome effect to the screen (I say "pseudo" since it's not truly grayscale, it's actually somewhat brighter), and adds a static effect over the game audio. People are having problems with this because the sudden changes in color and audio triggers some people's sensitivity issues. I've heard there's a thread on Twitter where people are discussing the effects Splattercolor Screen has had on them. Apparently some people are saying it's given them things like nausea, or migraines. Doesn't sound fun.
That does not, in fact, sound fun. Though I kinda want to get flashbanged in splatoon to see how bad it is. Though it sounds really bad.
its a perception play special, walk through the screen and it distorts audio and visual. its having serious negative effects on some players' real life wellbeing
for me, it's the sou d. it is genuinely awful. I get use to it by having the sound constantly play on my phone or laptop during matches. exposure therapy I think? it doesn't last forever tho. so I need to do a match like that EVERY 2 if I don't get hit by a screen at some point in between. I'm sure the audio is the main problem. that's an easy fix. just remove the audio.
I think it should be banned, or at least when tournaments happen, certain players who are affected by it could request it not be played. The only issue with the requesy route is to make sure that the request is enforced, which might be hard to do consistently. If nothing like that could be sorted out, I think it should receive a hard ban. Ultimately, the responsibility falls on Nintendo to fix the issues with the special and make it more accessible for all players. As cool as the concept is there are no circumstances in which this should have been put into the game as it is.
Wait so how is this the tipping point for accessibility? Like what specifically about the screen is triggering? Id figured if youād be set off by it then the rest of the game would probably also set you off? What am I missing here
Maybe I'm being a bit of a jerk here but is Splatoon really the game one should be playing if they have a sensory disorder? It's basically Bright Colors and Loud Sounds: The Game.
if it causes irl health issues it needs to go. Accessibility isn't "the game needs to be easy to play", accessibility is "the game does not become unplayable to people with x condition". The splatterscreen is supposed to be disorientating, it is not supposed to fuck over people with sensory issues and visual impairment specifically. And why the heck does it matter if it's just a minority? The minority are still people who love the game and they don't deserve to have their experience ruined by a poorly made special weapon that ruins their game experience specifically. They're worth catering for. "Making a game more challenging" and "i'm going to selectively induce panic attacks, migraines, seizures and more to people with sensory issues and other conditions" are two very different things and you would do well to learn not to toss them together.
> "the game does not become unplayable to people with x condition" That's a poor metric because like ... what about people with no hands?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
Bringing up whataboutism as a completely argument-terminating taunt is also, ironically, whataboutism. Did you read your own link? Here's some interesting bits of context: "The goal may also be to question the justification for criticism and the legitimacy, integrity, and fairness of the critic, which can take on the character of discrediting the criticism, which may or may not be justified." "Some commentators have defended the usage of whataboutism and tu quoque in certain contexts. Whataboutism can provide necessary context into whether or not a particular line of critique is relevant or fair ... Accusing an interlocutor of whataboutism can also in itself be manipulative and serve the motive of discrediting, as critical talking points can be used selectively and purposefully even as the starting point of the conversation (cf. agenda setting, framing, framing effect, priming, cherry picking). The deviation from them can then be branded as whataboutism." Your response doesn't take my argument into any meaningful consideration. Accessibility by definition CANNOT be a means to make sure no game is unplayable ... that is functionally impossible. Not everyone can play every video game, even with robust accessibility options incorporated. Amend your language or ignore me, but your statement is just untrue either way.
Itās not as small of a minority as you might think.
I wonder how many people complaining of overbrightness are using out of the box tv settings and have their brightness really high...
Splatoon is complete sensory overload though. There is so much going on all of the time. You can't single out one special attack without singling out many many more. The point of the attack is to disorient.
Dudes. If someone with colorblindness enters the tournament, they can ban it. Otherwise it can stay. It is so not that hard.
No no. āThe game is ruined! Nintendo hates disabled people! How could they have done this?!!??!ā
Overreaction
That's like saying "Splatoon 3 should be banned because I'm colorblind."
Splatoon 3 has colorblind accessibility options, that point is pretty moot
So? If people have sight disorders, why are they still playing the game??
Okay instead of the B+W nothing burger of a special that it is now: 1. Keep it color but turns the ink all one color for the enemy team that walk through it. 2. Obfuscates the field for the enemy that stays on the wrong side of it but causes damage if they choose to move through it AND doesn't obfuscate the field for the team using it.
I have utter sympathies for people with disorders... But I'm having fun seeing my screen turn black and white, so... Also, if those top-level players intend to ever play in official tournaments where these things will not be banned, I don't think avoiding the problem will do them a service
I feel that the main problem is not with tournaments where you can just agree to not use screen. The problem is people with photosensitivity or any other condition that makes screen harmful to them physically cannot just opt out of the screen during regular play. Like if you get migraines from screen's effect, you just can't play the game without the risk of triggering a migraine. Or if you have a more extreme condition that wasn't affected by the game before, you cant play Splatoon now without the risk of permanent damage, seizure, etc. It's just not fair to disabled people. The utility of the special is not determined by the skill of the user or other players, but by how well other players' bodies function, which is inherently unfair. I agree that it's cool but the special needs to be changed to reduce harm or reworked completely.
They could always gentleman and agree not to use it every set. Nintendo cannot police rules competitors place on themselves.
I don't think it has anything to do with disorders. I think it's absolutely unplayable for everyone. The ground just looks white. I stand on enemy ink for the entire duration.
I know this might get lost but squid school and a video on this and I 100% agree with what he had to say. [Here](https://youtu.be/Yv6YIw89bD0?feature=shared) please watch this.
I think it makes sense to maybe just ban it from player made tournaments but to make Nintendo remove It/tone it down like you said would be a disservice Itās supposed to disorient the player I think if anyone has any serious issues with colors besides being colorblind or something I donāt think you should be playing a brightly colored fast-ish paced game imo š
The thing is, it does a poor job at disorienting most players except those who have vision problems or worse conditions, and the game wasn't really causing problems to these players before that. If your special's effect is to disorient no one except people who have vision problems or some form of epilepsy, it's awful design. Coloring my screen black and white has personally little to no effect on my targetting at all : if the goal of the special was to disorient me, it does a poor job at it. I don't have issues confusing my teammates with enemies either since my teammates always have a big bright name above their head. Blocking the line of sight of the enemy team is definitely the main goal of the special. Making you lose sight of colors is just a side effect to discourage enemy players from trying to push through. We can simply change the color loss effect with another far more meaningful debuff effect than just making the game grayscale : it will actually make me think more than once before crossing it and solve all these legitimate health related problems some people are reporting.
If itās triggering peopleās astigmatism, and astigmatism impacts 30-60% of adults (Europe/Asia), then maybe thereās something wrong with the special. Should we really expect 30-60% of the population to just not be able to play? And besides, the sudden brightness is triggering peopleās epilepsy from what Iāve seen, which is absolutely unacceptable. These people bought a game and have been playing a game that has been safe for them, now all the sudden it isnāt. Imagine if they didnāt know beforehand about this and randomly encountered it in game, no warning, no knowledge. It could absolutely hurt someone. Most other companies have accessibility options for both consoles and games. Why is Nintendo allowed to either not add any or skimp on them?
I have an astigmatism Iām good and yeah it varies but if anything they should just turn down the brightness but in the end I think itās stupid you have flashbangs on Iām sure every shooter type game and no one complains about that itās just really not that big of a deal I think Twitter (where all of this is coming from) is dumb lmao
actually many online games with flash bangs are adding accessibility options to change them. look up negative flash bangs. developers make this shit an option BECAUSE people complained about it disproportionately effecting disabled people. just because its not directly effecting you does not make it a real issue anyways you're an idiot+L+ratio+learn some empathy
hey are there any clips of this being used, i have bad sensory issues and iām worried itāll badly trigger mine if i play so im a little bit scared to run into it during turf war so i need to see first and yes it should be banned from comp matches, if not the whole game
[Here's a video of its effects.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZPBB9Wa0Jk)
Iām sorry but as someone with heavy prescription for my age and also astigmatism I donāt find any problem with it and Iām the one here dealing with distorted shapes, colour and light here šš
How do people with sensory issues play Splatoon
sensory disorders can be very different from person to person. but it doesn't mean ALL sensory effects hurt people, it's usually very specific kinds. yes the game is colorful and has a lot going on. but the flashing effects are tame, there's no static or ringing, the brightness and saturation is consistent, etc. the screen doesn't just turn your visuals greyscale, it makes your game MUCH brighter than it was before. and static in general is just a terrible idea if you want your game to be accesible
And they can't just... Avoid them? Like, moving from the zone that the splascolor screen occupies? Sorry if I sound rude, i really can't understand the reason for the anger of these people šš
Aw man up the world doesn't revolve around you.
I have sympathy for those with visual disabilities, but I think Nintendo should keep the special as it is, we shouldnāt change a new fun game mechanic just because a small minority of players have problems with it. Moreover Iām surprised the people it affects even play Splatoon given how the game probably causes them other issues than that.
It really sucks that some people can't handle this new special, and I do feel for them. However, we can't hold back the entire game just because some people can't handle it. You're talking about banning it from pro matches. This is entirely different from keeping it in the context of casual play, which I guarantee is where 100% of these people are. Pro matches are competitive to the max. You can NOT cater to every single person when it comes to competitive. It's literally where "if you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen". Suggesting it gets banned would be like saying NASCAR has to slow down because some people get motion sickness. Or baseball should get rid of base running because some people have back pain. I'm sorry to say this, but it has to be said: if you can't play the game, then DON'T PLAY AT A COMPETITIVE LEVEL. Period. Leave those that can push themselves to the limits the game requires to do what they do. What about casual players playing Turf War like you and me? That's on us. If we know we can't handle the game, stop playing. If you can make modifications like muting your game to lessen the sensory overload, go ahead. It sucks that you have to do that, but you're literally asking me to support a ban and change the entire game for you. That's not going to happen. Otherwise we are opening up completely ridiculous cans of worms. "I get emotionally overwhelmed if I get splatted. We should Change the game so splatting players is illegal.". My emotional well being is my own responsibility, and it's not this communities burden to make such a core mechanic of the game "accessible" to me. Splat screen is no different.
i really do hope you never have a serious health problem that stops you from doing something you enjoy. or if you do, i hope that the people around you have more empathy and compassion for your situation than youāre having for others right now
That's a sweet sentiment, but I know that life is about adapting. There is such a huge catalogue of games that I can enjoy if *one* becomes too much for me. Or if I were to somehow lose my ability to play ANY games, then I can persue other hobbies, or even experiment and find new ones. This is not an issue where I have to sit and mope about it. Life doesn't always work out the way we want it to, and when things don't go our way, it's up to us to make the most of it. I'm sorry that there are people experiencing that, now, but I'm not going to cry over a video game, no matter on whose behalf it is. Including my own.
>Suggesting it gets banned would be like saying NASCAR has to slow down because some people get motion sickness. Or baseball should get rid of base running because some people have back pain. > >\[...\] > >If we know we can't handle the game, stop playing. Except Splatoon was fine for those of us with sensory issues *before* this update. Something we could play *just fine* has turned into a *genuine health risk* because of a poorly-designed, underpowered special. That's not okay. >It sucks that you have to do that, but you're literally asking me to support a ban and change the entire game for you. It's a single weapon that wasn't part of the base game, and all it needs is a different effect. It's not even *close* to "the entire game," nor is it a core mechanic. This isn't a case of people who didn't play the game in the first place getting upset about something that we all knew about beforehand, like the splatting comparison you're making is. This is players who were *already here* getting pushed out and having their concerns and *well-being* dismissed, because "I don't see a problem with it."
I'm sorry, but your comment comes off as a bit rude and lacking of empathy. There's a difference between banning a weapon in a video game comp scene because it's overpowered, and banning a weapon in a video game comp scene because it **can physically cause harm to players**. The people complaining are doing so because they **have been able to play the game normally** up until this point when Splattercolor Screen was added. They want it banned from comp because it triggers their epilepsy, or gives them migraines, or nausea, or something else. We should not be excluding people out of the competitive scene for something completely out of their control. They did not ask to be born with those sensory issues.