Splatoon 3 players can’t get into the most important part of Splatfests

Might be for the best.

Kristi Jimenez
September 25, 2022
News Splatoon 3

Image via Nintendo

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Splatoon 3 players have been struggling to get into Tricolor Turf War battles since the start of the second half of the Gear vs. Grub vs. Fun Splatfest. Players on the Splatoon 3 subreddit have been reporting that they have been waiting for up to two hours for a Tricolor match and haven’t gotten one. However, Nintendo warned players in advance that this would happen because of the feedback from the World Premiere Splatfest.

Back in August 2022 during the Splatoon 3 Direct, Tricolor Turf War was the biggest piece of news that came out of that broadcast. The ability for all three teams to face each other during the second half of a Splatfest rather than having the standard 4v4 was interesting. Whoever was the winning team at the halftime report was the defending team and had four of their players go up against the other two teams with two players on each side. The winning team had to defend the Ultra Signal from the opposing teams. If they failed to do so, a bunch of the enemy’s ink would be splattered all over the stage. Nintendo purposed that the mode would be three minutes of chaotic fun for all sides and players were excited to try it out.

[Notification] In the next Splatfest, we’ll reduce the frequency of Tricolor Turf War battles compared to the Splatfest World Premiere. Users may encounter regular Turf War battles more often even if they choose Tricolor Battle. We’ll continue to improve our matchmaking system!
— Splatoon North America (@SplatoonNA) September 13, 2022

However, when players were finally able to test out the new game mode during the World Premiere Splatfest, it was a bust. Many players who were on the leading team, Team Scissors, complained about how unbalanced the mode was. If either losing team, Team Rock or Team Paper, got the Ultra Signal even once, it was incredibly hard for the defending team to come back. Even members of the other teams posted about how unfair it was.

This caused the official Splatoon Twitter account to post that the next Splatfest will have a reduced frequency of Tricolor Turf War battles compared to the World Premiere. Although this may seem like a blessing, it seems like they may have tweaked it too much. We’ll have to see if player feedback from this Splatfest will cause further the company to mess with the frequency of Tricolor Turf War battles even further.