Just last week, Nintendo released the 11.0.0 update for Splatoon 3. This update introduced a new feature that displays health values. The small bar that appears above a character’s head immediately split players into two strongly opposing groups, those who strongly support it and those who strongly oppose it. This is not a particularly large change, yet it has generated intense controversy. This made me start thinking about a broader question: in long running online games, how can designers balance the needs of different types of players?

Ever since Splatoon 3 was released in the fall of 2022, I have had strong negative opinions about it. As a player with over one thousand hours in Splatoon 2, I believe that Nintendo has made significant compromises in the Splatoon series in order to accommodate new players or lower ranked players, particularly through changes to certain game mechanics. One example is the Rainmaker mode. In Splatoon 3, Nintendo changed a rule that had existed for seven years by adding an additional checkpoint. Similar to the health bar mentioned earlier, this change has also been controversial among players.

In the remaining three ranked battle modes, several changes further slow down the pace of the game. In Tower Control, the tower must move along a fixed route. In Splat Zones, when one team retakes the zone from the other, there is an additional countdown period. In Clam Blitz, players must continuously collect small clams, which makes it difficult for a successful push to completely end the game. In contrast, in Splatoon 1 and Splatoon 2 Rainmaker, players only needed to break the Rainmaker shield and carry it to the goal. There were no checkpoints between one hundred at the starting position and zero at the goal.

In my view, no extra checkpoint resulted in much faster pacing and forced players to pay close attention to the opening thirty seconds of a match. Any mistake in positioning or coordination could allow the opposing team to end the game within twenty seconds. After checkpoints were added, an attack that once flowed smoothly was interrupted by a mandatory pause. When the game was first released, this change forced many players who had experience with Splatoon 1 or 2 to relearn an offensive and defensive rhythm they were already familiar with.

Another source of dissatisfaction among players is the change to how ranked scores are calculated in Splatoon 3. In the first two games, players above rank C minus would be demoted if they failed to earn enough power through victories within a certain number of matches. Splatoon 3 removed this rule entirely. Once players enter a new rank, they will never be demoted regardless of how many matches they lose, unless they voluntarily choose to rank down, which is only possible once per season.

This rule sparked major controversy at launch. Many veteran players from previous titles, especially those at higher ranks, argued that it undermined the meaning of the ranking system itself. If a player simply plays long enough, even someone with poor skills can eventually reach a very high rank. Nintendo explained this change as a way to allow average players to experience high level competitive play. However, high level competition has never existed because of a label. It exists because of player skill.

More than three years after the game’s release, this prediction has been confirmed. Personal power is a key metric used in the Splatoon series to evaluate player skill. In Splatoon 2, the entry requirement for X Rank, the highest rank, was a power level of two thousand. Falling below this value would result in being demoted back to S plus nine. Because Splatoon 3 removed demotion, players with a power level of fifteen hundred are now able to participate in X Rank matches. In the context of Splatoon, this roughly corresponds to an A Rank level of ability. With such a wide disparity in skill among X Rank participants, X Rank has clearly lost its original meaning as a symbol of the highest level of competition.

Let us return to the health bar mentioned at the beginning. In this update, Nintendo introduced visible health bars for the first time. When any player takes damage during a match, nearby players can see a health bar appear above that character’s head. In my opinion, this directly violates the core principles of the Splatoon series. When Splatoon 1 was first released, one of its selling points was that players could hide themselves in ink at any time, and the health bar undermines this sense of stealth.

Before this update, players judged an opponent’s remaining health by observing whether enemy ink was covering their body and how much ink was present. Another concern raised by players is that the health bar distracts attention. Splatoon is a fast paced game, and while health bars may provide a more direct way to read an opponent’s status, the series has functioned successfully for ten years without them. If that is the case, why introduce a solution whose drawbacks outweigh its benefits?

The controversy surrounding the newly introduced health bar is therefore not an isolated reaction to a visual change, but a reflection of a broader design tension within Splatoon 3. Many of the systems discussed above, from ranked progression to rule adjustments, share a common intention: to reduce frustration and make the game more approachable. However, accessibility achieved by flattening skill expression risks undermining the very depth that gives competitive systems meaning.

Long term engagement in games like Splatoon is built not only on fairness, but on the gradual mastery of implicit systems. This includes learning how to read the battlefield, anticipate opponents, and understand the game world through experience rather than explicit indicators. Supporting new players does not necessarily require exposing every layer of information or guaranteeing participation in high level play. Instead, it calls for thoughtful onboarding and systems that preserve the value of expertise.

If Splatoon is to remain distinctive as a long running series, future updates may need to reconsider not just who they are designed for, but what kind of understanding they encourage players to develop. Otherwise, well intentioned changes may continue to erode the skills and design language that once defined the series.