Gonna break down the argument a bit because that's one scary-ass wall of text and I want to make sure I'm digesting it properly.
@Yobiyopi:
Yeah killing can be beneficial for sure, and if there is a good opportunity with the odds in your favor it's ok to do it, but to go out of your way just to kill the opponents is really not ideal for most of the weapons (unless you use of course a sniper or something that relies on killing as much as possible).
Except we're not even talking about just killing and hunting down opponents. The way you addressed the topic was from a basis of all confrontation being negative. Not just vindictive chasing of a single individual. You were even talking about running into enemies:
"When you see opponents the best decision is always trying to either flee from unnecessary fights that would only waste precious seconds, or squid jump to your base in desperate situations, because the amount of time lost would be inferior to the one for respawning."
Also, note that while I main a kelp, I use a large variety of other weapons, whether they're ones where you don't WANT to be running into enemies (brushy) or ones where you want to stay back on defense as much as possible (heavy splatling). So no, I'm not just talking about killing being good for snipers, but something you just have to do as your duty to your team. Running into an opponent and having the chance to kill them but not doing it means someone else in your team either dies or loses time to do what you didn't do, and the philosophy underlying this practice implies that your time is more important than that of your teammates, and I disagree with that.
For example, consider some of the matches we had in port mackerel. I was able, for entire consecutive matches, to stand on the tractor on your side of the map, constantly inking down on opponents from above with my brush to kill them and keep them from passing. Naturally, I noticed several times you just went through the side I wasn't covering, which tells me:
- You were getting killed often enough by my teammates who were presumably free to deal with you while I was blocking your entire team
- Given that my teams kept winning those matches my guess is that your lone contribution wasn't enough to counteract the fact I was blocking the entire rest of your team.
So sure, while this strategy may work wonders for you when the rest of your team is dealing with opponents well enough, it still means that your team has one person less to help deal with that one douchebag blocking them from the middle. And that costs matches.
There is also to consider your teammates, so if you have a proper sniper that will kill, you wouldn't have to worry as much, but because of this possibility there are so many out there that is hard to think of every possible scenario.
I was unable to understand this sentence. I think what you mean is that if someone in your team has a sniper or a killy weapon then why bother killing. To which I say:
Do you know how legitimately shitty of a situation it is to have a sniper and be overrun by opponents? The ink tank is not sufficient, the loading time is not fast enough, and you dying means the team suddenly has cracked open your entire middle. It's a shitty situation, and many will tell you how many times I have cursed like a sailor when, as a sniper, I have to constantly be on the move because I'm surrounded by opponents who can shoot faster than me, longer than me, and are for some reason not being dealt with by my teammates.
For everyone: having a sniper on your team doesn't mean "oh cool, I guess they'll kill everyone then." It means you hold the line and whatever filters out through you will be most likely covered. It also means that if you see an asshole who is being sneaky and flanking your team you don't just keep going and let them live because, I bet you, that asshole is flanking the team to get the sniper from behind in the first place.
I really would never advise to just avoid combat 100% of the time just to play safe, because that is not ideal either, but the odds of staying alive vs. a possible death should speak for itself.
But you DID advise that:
"When you see opponents the best decision is always trying to either flee from unnecessary fights that would only waste precious seconds, or squid jump to your base in desperate situations, because the amount of time lost would be inferior to the one for respawning."
In short i think it's just a safer approach to play defensively and take whatever lucky chance you get to either sneak on someone or overwhelm them with your special if you think it's a good risk vs. reward situation. Throwing yourself on the offensive just to clear the field is really not the optimal thing to do with most weapons. (Also as a side note, if you can suicide yourself it's better than letting the enemy kill you, you will be respawned faster and won't give points to the opponent).
Also disagree with this, from multiple point of views.
Lucky chances means your gameplay strategy depends on the failure of others instead of on your own personal skill. Which is technically leaving it to an element of random since you don't know what your opposing team might consist of.
You speak of clearing the field as if it's a negative thing but it can be the opposite entirely. Sometimes trading kills to help getting rid of that one asshole who's blocking your entire team from progressing means that you're able to overtake the enemy, and ignoring them still means you have another 3 people to deal with while your team is still potentially caught up with the asshole. Again, this implies that you personally matter more than you and your team combined.
I'm also noting that your argument about confrontation being a negative wasn't phrased to specifically address one type of weapon. In fact, a lot of what you say makes sense with the main I know you use being the inkbrush or tri-slosher with bubbler, because those two are weapons where you can run around inking stupid amounts of ground and then bubbling when someone gets up close, rinse and repeat. But that's not a viable playstyle for all loadouts, and saying it as generic advice for all splatoon matches is just simply inaccurate, and irresponsible in the sense that it suggests gameplay involving zero support of your team.
Aside from this though, i would like also to consider another interesting approach that can help both beginners, experts, or people that want to improve (it works better on ranked, but it's useful for turf war too), but this time for the people that instead want to play more aggressively with intents to kill.
Many times i see people just inking whatever spot they see uncovered, especially neutral ground, but this is not really the super best mlg best strategy, because by doing that you're basically giving free ink to the opponent to gain more points than you, or just letting them see an area that they most likely will run to and cover for their own good. This seems pretty standard so far, but if you're aiming to be the most awesome squid killer, there are a lot of ways to set traps for the opponents: setting beacons/sprinklers in plain sight just to snipe them when they approach them is one of the most easy to pull off, but you can also set a couple of beacons relatively close to each other, to either let some teammates use it, or to reduce the field of view of a whatever oppoent that will be faced with those targets that will most likely draw their attention. And with 2/3 of them, it becomes much easier to just take them out while they're thinking on destroying those beacons. Reducing the field of view i think is key in many engagements, overwhelming what they see on the screen can be useful for manipulating the behavior of the opponents, wheter it is by making them fear something, or letting them feel they're doing good before killing them. It's really hard to do these things once you play, but keeping in mind that manipulating the enemy means killing them before even actually doing so can prove to be efficient to players with a set approach in mind, instead of rushing to do whatever.
Not painting makes sense, but in general it also means drastically reduced mobility, which is ultimately one of the most important things you can do. I've definitely done the thing where I don't pain in the middle in the first ten seconds, then hide behind a wall and kill the incoming person. And sure, it was hilarious, lol, so smart.
BUT!
- again, it's something that I've only been able to pull off with a brush, so it sounds again like you passing brush techniques as universals
- once again this assumes that your team holds no value since not inking ground also means less movement options for them.
- if your enemy is paranoid or not a dumbass, they spot you and guess what? since you didn't ink anything you can't escape easily… unless you're a brushy, and then back to point 1. Squidhoping might work too, but I wouldn't count on that since counting on it involves assuming your opponent sucks.
- given it involves walking around when you could be swimming in ink, it's probably slow as fuck.
As for the decoy stuff, that's all good stuff and obvious part of the metagame. It literally IS the way you use sprinklers, and it's something people have been doing since the game came out. So yea, I suppose that's good advice yes. But you giving it tells me that when we talk about confrontation what you're actually thinking about is someone just walking around at people holding R, which is not exactly an accurate description of all splatoon confrontation. It's a description of people who have no strategy, and that's a completely separate discussion that does not involve telling people that killing is bad.
Another strategy to manipulate the enemy, is to go to their base, but just cover a straight line in front of the respawn point, this way they will be drawn to it, and you can hide in another small spot hidden from sight or too small to bother. By highlighting the bigger one and hiding in the small one, they won't consider that the actual threat was the one less worthy of their attention, and this will lead to their deaths. After you pull this off, you can switch between the two to instill a sense of fear bigger and bigger, making them question what to do and taking advantage of it, and this can work outside the enemy base too, in the middle of the field, by hiding in small spots while they will focus on the big shiny ones. If you add to this the method mentioned before of beacons/sprinklers it works even better. Keep in mind that all these approaches are mainly for support, and you should have a good team to help you pull these off while they maintain a good coverage of the map, and that you won't do a spectacular amount of points, it's just for fun and trying something different while the enemy will be caught off guard and won't be as focused.
No need to really address this since it's fairly obvious stuff, but I'd personally add that, again, this is a strategy that's far more efficient with particular weapons.
I'd also feel that if you're in their base camp for long enough to set this up before anyone respawns, then there's probably something wrong behind you and just sitting there lying in ink waiting to yell surprise might not be the best contribution to your team.
That game ending double splat was beautiful.