Third and finally, I think that a more productive complaint, if there is such a thing, would be that there are not enough unskilled but passionate Splatoon fans on this site, which has left me feeling absolutely alone. Everyone else who likes this game as much as I do is capable of playing it at a level far above me, leaving me without any sense of community with the game. I think that, based on my own resentment, I've allowed myself to blame the skilled players for this. This is unfair, because all it really means is that nobody is as stupid as I am.
Late to this, but I wanna also say that this absolutely isn’t true—there are
tons of passionate Splatoon fans that aren’t super skilled competitive players. I’m one of them! I don’t post in this thread often because I don’t really have much to add (and I tend to not post much in general unless I have some thought or perspective that I don’t see being shared by anyone else, because otherwise I feel it’s kind of pointless to post the same stuff that everyone else is posting), but I love Splatoon (well, I love everything from Nintendo) and play it regularly, with hundreds of hours in Splatoon 3…and I definitely still lose more matches than I win.
But I don’t let it bother me because winning isn’t my only goal—instead I set other goals of my own, like trying to get certain badges (only the reasonable ones, lol), getting at least one star for every weapon, buying all the gear and trying to fill in the “?” slots with abilities for all of them (okay, that last one is proving to be unrealistic with how much gear is in this game and I should really give up on it, lol), and clearing the catalog every season. Don’t have to be some pro player to do all that, and it satisfies me. I also stick to Turf War, though, ’cause I find Anarchy Battles to be too intimidating (plus I still don’t have a full set of proper gear with ideal abilities and I honestly am not sure how to go about figuring that out, but I also don’t want to waste a bunch of Ability Chunks and Super Sea Snails trying different things out), so maybe my preferred way to play may differ too much from what you want, but I do think it’s helpful to have other goals in playing the game besides winning ranked matches, and not seeing yourself as a failure if you’re not matching pro level play. It may be easier said than done, I know, but it would be tremendously helpful if you didn’t tie your enjoyment of the game to your competitive performance, and also acknowledge that it’s
okay to be average—
most players are, even those who play regularly and have hundreds of hours in the game! You’re probably a lot more skilled than you give yourself credit for, too, even if it may not feel that way to you. But also, you don’t
need to be skilled at a game to enjoy it!
Also, you’re
really not the stupid, failed, incompetent fuck-up that you think you are. My partner struggles with the same kind of self-loathing issues, so I’m extremely used to hearing stuff like that, and while I still struggle to help them overcome it all on my own, I’m very familiar with these kind of thoughts and I can assure you, these extreme negative thoughts aren’t the reality—not to say they aren’t valid thoughts you’re experiencing, either, though. This is probably where other people would say “you need to see a professional” if you aren’t already, and while that can be good advice, I personally hate responses like that because it ignores the fact that that’s not always an easy or accessible option for everyone, nor is it guaranteed to help, and maybe the person
has done that and it got them nowhere before…so I’ll just say that I understand how you feel, I really do, but also it can help tremendously to be aware of your self-loathing (which you seem to be, at least) and try your best to understand that you’re being way,
way harder on yourself than you should be. I dunno, this probably doesn’t help at all and I’m probably just coming across as preachy or something, but I can’t not try to say something when I see others in a similar place as my partner. Apologies if this is unhelpful and/or unwanted…
EDIT: I kinda skipped over the whole “no sense of community” thing, which I meant to address as well, so I’ll add that I totally understand that and I feel that regularly with pretty much
everything. It always seems so few people share my interests, and when I
do find others who do, it never seems like they’re interested in them in the same way—the priorities and preferences are always different, which just makes me feel alone no matter what. I guess I really don’t have any good advice for this, either, beyond sharing my understanding of the issue, but if it helps at all you’re not alone in feeling that way, at least. In my case I’ve just grown to not get too attached or involved in communities anymore because I know I’ll just end up feeling alone regardless—but I don’t let it ruin my enjoyment of my interests (because, like you seem to imply about yourself as well, that’s all that’s really keeping me together—if I didn’t have Nintendo, I probably wouldn’t be here today).
