No one's talking about the new Splatoon news? You'll want to.

[Mr Khan]

ToxicJosh said:
Doesn't bother me as I never use voice chat. Confirmation of local MP is a much bigger nugget in my eyes.

But really, how much a loss no-voice chat is depends on the length of the matched re voice chat. If they're less than 5 minutes, it's not worth it really. What would be nice though would be team lobby chat, with touchscreen map support, so you can plan your game beforehand. That would make a lot of sense and would give a nice spin on strategizing as you'd have to make a plan and either stick to it or watch it fall a part under the pressure of a foe.

Lack of bots is slightly irritating, as I don't mind the odd bot fight. Could be that they struggled to create an AI that took full advantage of the gameplay possibilities, or even that the amount of fluid to keep track of uses too much of the Wii U's CPU to make decent AI viable.

Other possibilities include the fairness of using bots: if you get 7 players together and the 8th ends up being a bot, that could be a big help or a huge hindrance to the team stuck with it, depending on the AI cruelty chosen. Or they just can't get bots to think strategically.

I agree that some sort of team mapping feature should be utilized in-lobby. Even if you can't draw them in real time, players could have the option of making a playbook showing their favorite ways to tackle a given map, which your teammates can see.