Splatoon: Ver. 2.4.0 coming in a few hours, new maps, end of DLC in January

New maps

Today, Nintendo announced that two new maps would soon be added to Splatoon. They’re called Piranha Pit and Ancho-V Games, and will be released in the upcoming weeks. No doubt Nintendo will make an announcement pretty soon!

Here’s a trailer introducing those two new maps:

And here’s some screenshots:

Source: Nintendo

Ver. 2.4.0

Splatoon was updated to Ver. 2.3.0 one month ago, but it’s already time for another update! Today, Nintendo announced that Ver. 2.4.0 would be released tomorrow (tonight in North America). It will bring several changes and fixes, along with the two new maps mentioned above.

Here’s the complete list of changes:

Matchmaking Adjustments:

• In Regular Battle and Splatfest, players of similar skill will be matched more often.

Rainmaker Adjustments:

• Added prohibited areas in Walleye Warehouse, Saltspray Rig, Arowana Mall, and Flounder Heights in Rainmaker mode.

When players enter the prohibited area while carrying the Rainmaker, the amount of time they are allowed to hold the Rainmaker will decrease faster as a penalty.

Stage Adjustments:

• Arowana Mall: Adjustments will be made to prevent users from taking certain shortcuts in all modes.
• Port Mackerel: Adjustments will be made to prevent users from taking certain shortcuts in all modes.
• Flounder Heights: Adjustments will be made to prevent users from taking certain shortcuts in all modes.
• Museum D’Alfonsino: Adjustments will be made to prevent users from taking certain shortcuts in Rainmaker mode.

Battle Fixes:

• Fix the issue in Rainmaker mode in which the countdown moves more than usual when a player gets the Rainmaker in the air.
• Fix the issue in Rainmaker mode in which the bombs’ blast waves inflict damage on the Rainmaker shield even when there are obstacles between the bomb and the shield.
• Fix the issue in Rainmaker mode in which Splash Walls placed near each other by the same team take damage when one of them blocks an ink splat.
• Fix the issue in which bombs that are thrown near a wall do not fly straight and makes contact with the wall.

Other:

• Adjustments have been made to make for a more pleasant gaming experience.

This new update will require 393MB of free space on your Wii U or external HDD (776MB if you don’t have Ver. 2.3.0 installed). To download it, you have two options:

• let the Wii U do its thing if you have automatic downloads activated. You should have the latest version installed the next time you launch the game;
• if you don’t have automatic downloads activated, you simply have to launch the game from the Home Menu (not the Quick Start Menu) while being connected to the internet. The update will then be downloaded and installed.

But before this update is released, there will be some mainteance tonight:

• Europe: 1.50AM to 3AM
• UK: 12.50AM to 2AM
• North America (ET): 7.50PM to 9PM
• North America (PT): 4.50PM to 6PM
• Japan: 9.50AM to 11AM

Source: Nintendo

DLC to end in January

Yesterday, Game Informer published an interview with Yuusuke Amano (Director) and Hisashi Nogami (Producer), in which they talked about the DLC for Splatoon (among other things). The former reiterated that the team wanted to prioritize “training” the userbase, who would have to learn the basics first, which is why they chose to ship the game with a limited number of maps and game modes.

After all, Splatoon isn’t exactly like your typical shooter, so the developers thought it would be better to make sure players understood the basics of gameplay before introducing more complex game modes and maps.

Since launch, the development team has added quite a lot of new weapons, maps, and game modes, but this will all end in January. That being said, updates will still be released when needed, to fix various issues and whatnot. Same for Splatfests, which will continue even after the end of new content distribution. Also, the developers confirmed there would not be paid DLC (which is not why the distribution of free content will end).

But even if Nintendo will not add new maps, it doesn’t like the map rotation system will be changed any time soon. Here’s what Yuusuke Amano had to say about that:

The idea that players would have two maps on which to play and you would take one weapon into the map and figure out the best way to move about the map and learn the ins and outs of each stage. We don’t have any immediate plans to change that. Thinking forward, this is something that would really affect the structure of the game. It is something that we consistently continue to see users discussing. It’s perhaps something we will start to think about as a challenge, and we would need to think of the best ways to solve that challenge, but we don’t have any immediate plans to take that on.

In the interview, the developers also shot down the idea of a spin-off focusing exclusively on Single Player, along with a Nintendo 3DS version (the handheld would not be powerful enough for the paint mechanics).

Click here to read the full interview over at GameInformer!