Hisashi Nogami, productor:
We want everyone to play this game from the same point, so that all players – those who haven’t played shooters before, as well as those who have – can enjoy the game. Getting to this though meant going through a selection process for all features that should appear in the game.
First, we put a lot of effort into every inch of the online stages, so by playing them over and over again users can get a better feel for the terrain, giving the gameplay more breadth and depth. The characteristics of the weapons and the strategies for using them vary with each weapon, and of course these will vary depending on the stage you use them in and even what combination of equipment your teammates and opponents are using. We want users to enjoy each and every single piece of content we’ve prepared, so rather than provide a lot at once, we’re going to be adding them a little at a time.Second, is that while we’ve paid a lot of attention to the balancing the game, the flip-side of this is that we feel the game needs weapons with a lot of variety as well as stages with complex layouts to really expand the gameplay.
The problem there is that these can sometimes disrupt the overall balance of the game.
The real fun of Splatoon comes when players are comfortable with the game, and are able to play to their full potential with other players they meet in the online matches.
We’ll be adding more stages and weapons as we see how the community matures. We’ll also do something similar with further game modes too.
