You may remember that yesterday Nintendo announced that Splatoon 3 would be getting a brand new update later tonight. They also released patch notes for the update in advance, which is something Nintendo likes to do often with Splatoon 3 updates.
Well, as promised, Nintendo has officially released the update. After you update the game, Splatoon 3 should now be on version 8.1.0. This update focuses on weapon rebalancing and bug fixes. If you missed seeing the update patch notes when they were released yesterday, you can see them for yourself below.
Changes to player controls
- Made it so that when a player opens a brella canopy, the canopy opens on other players’ screens faster than before.
- This is to reduce the delay between the canopy opening on the user’s screen and the canopy opening on other players’ screens as much as possible.
- Placing Squid Beacons and Big Bubblers near height differences is made easier.
- Made the scattered weapons and equipment of a defeated player disappear faster than before.
- Made so that when the swimming player reverts to Inkling form and immediately uses a weapon, the ink from their body disappears faster than before.
- This is to alleviate the reduced visibility when the player is the same color as the ink on the ground even when in Inkling form.
- Made so that when the player is on the edge of the height difference, the occurrence of the player moving back and forth between higher and lower heights for a short period of time on other players’ screens will occur less often.
- It’s easier than before to jump while moving along the edge of the field.
- Made it so that when mint decavitator and coal decavitator are equipped and the ZR button is held, the crosshair showing where the attack will affect or break is displayed just like when the ZR button is not held.
Changes to the multiplayer game
- Specifications for some major weapons have changed.
| Weapon | Change details |
|---|---|
| Aerospray MG Aerospray RG |
Increased the ink splash radius on impact by approximately 3%. |
| Blaster Custom Blaster |
Reduced the amount of time it takes to start ink recovery after firing by about 1/20 of a second. |
| Clash Blaster Clash Blaster Neo |
Movement speed while shooting is now about 4% faster. |
| S-BLAST ’92 S- EXPLODE ’91 |
Reduced continuous fire interval by about 1/12 second. |
| Carbon roller Carbon Roller Deco |
Adjusted damage drop rate based on distance for horizontal swings, allowing it to deal 50.0 damage/100 damage further than before. Slightly expanded vertical swing collision detection with players to make hitting opponents easier. |
| Dynamo roller Golden dynamo roller |
Adjusted how horizontal swings drop ink to leave less gaps in ink or attacks than before. |
| Big Swig Roller Big Swig Roller Express |
Increased horizontal swing damage to distant enemies from 35.0 to 40.0. No damage changes at distances that deal 50.0 or more damage. |
| Ink brush Ink brush New |
Slightly expanded player collision detection for the ink thrown during brush swings to make it easier to hit opponents. |
| Octobrush Octobrush New Orderbrush replica |
Slightly expanded player collision detection for ink thrown when brushing to make it easier to hit opponents. |
| Douser Dualies FF Custom Douser Dualies FF |
Reduced the amount of ink consumed during baking by approximately 14%. Reduced the amount of ink consumed by Dodge Rolls from 12% of the ink tank to 10%. |
| Recycled Brella 24 Mk I Recycled Brella 24 Mk II |
Reduced the time it takes for canopies lost by being launched or broken by an opponent to recover by about 1/3 second. |
- The specifications for some special weapons have changed.
| Special weapon | Change details |
|---|---|
| Reefslider | Increased the radius of the blast area that deals 70.0 damage by about 10%. Reduced the ink splash radius from the explosion by about 5%. |
| Ink Vac | He made it so that when the jet of ink hits a wall, the explosion will also apply ink to the ground nearby. He made it so that when the jet of ink hits the ground, the explosion will also paint nearby walls. |
| Super Chump | Decreased time between decoy drop and explosion from about 4.0 seconds to about 3.5 seconds. |
| Three-eyed | Damage dealt to Big Bubbler has been reduced to around 67% from before. |
| Inkjet | Reduced the damage done to Big Bubbler by direct shots and explosions to about 67% of what it was before. |
| Kraken Royale | Increased the time it takes to finish charging an attack by approximately 1/12 of a second. |
- The points required for some special weapons have changed.
| Krak-On Splat Roller | 180 | 170 |
| Bloblobber Deco | 200 | 190 |
- UX Battles, changed the conditions for the current temporary ranking of players during the season to display on the screen from within rank 3,000 to within rank 50,000.
- In Clam Blitz mode, it is made so that when the player throws a clam or power clam into the goal just before it closes on their screen, the count will advance and the goal will reopen even if the goal was already closed on the screens at that time other players, as long as it is within a certain time of closing the objective.
Other changes
- Allows you to continue pressing the A button to fast forward the animations on the screen where XP and Grizzco points are calculated after returning to the lobby or Grizzco.
- In battles, made pressing Down will not send Booyah! give a signal for a short time immediately after a player is defeated.
- This change is to prevent unintended signals from being sent if the player is defeated while trying to Super Jump to the spawn point.
- When a teammate uses a Booyah Bomb, players can send a Booyah! regardless of this change.
- In Salmon Run, it’s made so that pressing Up won’t send you Here! signal for a short time immediately after the player is revived from the lifeline.
- This change is to prevent unintended signals from being sent in case the player is helped by a teammate while trying to send help! signal.
- Several changes have been made to make it easier to use photo mode in private battles.
- Players can now start scouting even when there are only players on one of the teams.
- During scouting, this way! and Booyah! sent by players of the other team will now also be displayed.
- During scouting, when another player repeatedly uses This way! or Booyah! in a short time, it will now be displayed without fail.
- Shortened the time until a match is considered a no-contest when the other player is sent off immediately after the start of the match.
- Made adjustments to make it harder to cause camera shake due to motion controls when pressing the ZR button to zoom the screen in Splatsville, Inkopolis Plaza, Inkopolis Square, and Order Sector.
- Adjusted player position when leaving Grizzco in Splatsville to make it harder to accidentally re-enter Grizzco by holding the left stick tilted.
- Made it so that players you’ve fought in X battles don’t show up in the Users you’ve played with system feature.
This update focuses on changes to multiplayer balance and gameplay comfort.
For brellas, we’ve made changes to mitigate an occurrence where, despite enough time having passed since opening the canopy on the player’s screen, they would sometimes still be hit by their opponents’ blows and be defeated.
For most main weapon attacks, including those made with brellas, whether damage is actually dealt is determined by whether the attack hits the attacking player’s screen. For this reason, when using the canopy to block an opponent’s attacks, it matters whether the canopy is open or not.
Due to the time it takes to communicate over the internet, it takes longer for the brelle turret to open on the opponent’s screen than it does on the player’s own screen. Additionally, due to a fix in version 2.1.0 for an issue where the brella canopy opening animation to protect from attacks was slower than the actual defensive effect started, the canopy opening time appeared faster on the player’s own screen. As a result, this caused a more frequent phenomenon where, despite seemingly enough time having passed since opening the canopy on their own screen, the player would sometimes still be hit by their opponents’ blows and be defeated.
To solve this problem without changing the brella spec, we considered reverting the animation back to its pre-2.1.0 state, but found that breaking the feel of the current controls was a bigger problem.
After careful consideration, we decided to fix this by reducing the difference in time when a player opens their canopy by speeding up the time it takes for the canopy to appear open on the opponent’s screen.
For the other main weapons, we’ve made changes that highlight their strengths and make them easier to use for players who use them regularly.
Among the special weapons, while we’ve made changes to increase the reliability of the Reefslider’s damage effects, we’ve slightly reduced the impact of the ink from its explosion. For this reason, this is an upgrade when used to defeat enemies, but it will make it a little difficult to use it to mark territory again and again.
For the Ink Vac, we made it easier to use by mitigating the phenomenon where the ground or walls were not painted depending on the position of the ink firing shot.
For Super Chump, we’ve made it easier to combo with follow-up attacks using the main weapon, reducing the amount of time opponents have to deal with decoys.
For Kraken Royale, by increasing the charge time slightly, we’ve made a difference between using a dash attack and a jump attack.
We’ve made changes to the Trizooka and Inkjet to bring the damage efficiency of the Big Bubbler closer to that of other special weapons.
In addition, we’ve made other changes to improve gameplay, including changes to prevent unintentional signals from being sent in certain situations, changes to mitigate issues with scattered weapons and gear blocking the aim, and changes to stabilize the screen when an opponent is near the edge of the height difference.
We plan to release the next update at the end of the current season. In that update, we’ll be making multiplayer balance changes, including reducing the abilities of select weapons.
