Splatoon 2 devs talk tweaks, new content, story aspect, new rules, future content and more

The following comes from a Famitsu interview with Art director Seita Inoue, lead programmer Shintaro Sato, director Yusuke Amano, and producer Hisashi Nogami, as translated by NintendoEverything.

- the game's shading mechanism has changed, which allows for increased gear texture quality
- all graphical aspects and programming mechanisms have been built up from scratch for this sequel
- maximum resolution is 1080p in TV mode
- a bigger focus for Nintendo was the 60 frames per second
- occasionally the resolution will be scaled down when there is too much ink displaying on the screen
- Nintendo reduced the CPU load and refined the way to use CPU power effectively to maintain 60fps in all matches
- weapons were tweaked to let players be more creative by thinking about unique weapon characteristics and their best uses
- weapons are designed to be effective when they are used during the right occasion
- Special weapons are stronger than the original ones when used in the right situation, but weaker otherwise
- the damage and effect of slowing down your movement when you step in the opponent’s ink are reduced from original
- you can jump up in rank if you’re good enough, but only up until S
- you can’t jump up from C, B or A to S+
- when you win battles in Ranked mode, the Ranked meter fills and your rank goes up when its fully filled
- when you lose a battle, the gauge does not decrease, but the meter starts to crack
- once the meter reaches its limit, it breaks
- when the meter breaks, you have to start over again from the beginning or from a lower rank
- highest rank is still S+, but if you fill up the Ranked meter, you get numbers after the alphabet such as “S+1”, “S+2” and so on
- maximum number is “S+50”, but this number will not be displayed to your opponent
- you are the only one to see it, and you can check it on your own status screen
- Ranked Power is calculated by an algorithm to measure how strong each player is with minuteness
- this will determine if a player’s rank is worthy of receiving a big jump (like from “C” to “A”)
- Ranked Power has no relation to your splat rate, and is more tied into to how well you lead your team to victory
- you won’t drop off more than one rank even if you play poorly
- stage rotation time was changed to two hours
- this was done because the devs expected people to play for an hour or so, but they found people play much longer
- with Salmon Run, Nintendo considered how to implement a co-op oriented mode in a player-versus-player type of game
- the devs will monitor how users are playing this mode to see if there's some tweaks they can throw in
- more Salmon Run maps will be added in the future, but Nintendo wouldn't comment on adding more enemy types to the mode
- rewards are changed each time Salmon Run is played
- you can obtain rewards when playing locally, but not gear
- originally Nintendo had an idea for this mode, but had no background setting, enemy designs, etc.
- Inoue suggested that it should be salmon-themed
- when Nintendo hosted the Splatfest that pit Callie against Marie, the development of Splatoon 2 had started
- the devs had already decided to have the result reflected in the sequel
- they even had an idea to announce the Splatfest with a phrase “Your choice will change the next Splatoon”
- the timing to announce a sequel wasn’t right, so they decided against this
- they eventually released a series of short stories about the Squid Sisters to show how the Splatfest affected the sequel’s story
- Nintendo wouldn't say if Marina is an Octoling, and noted that Inklings are not paying attention to this too much
- Inklings don’t care about appearances, as long as everyone is doing something fresh
- the Squid Sisters had composers who produced their songs, but Off the Hook are composing their music by themselves
- Pearl is genius artist, but she couldn’t find a right partner because she’s a bit too edgy
- she eventually found Marina as a partner though, and their chemistry is sparkling right now
- Nintendo is planning a year of content updates for Splatoon 2
- when finished, the quantity of stages will be more than the original
- some of the additional stages are totally new and some will be arranged stages from the first game
- not all original stages will return and they are choosing stages based on the potential for them to be improved
- Brella is shotgun-esque weapon, so the ink hits your opponent more if you are closer
- it can shield damage when you open it, but the amount of damage has a limit and once it reaches it, it breaks
- you can shoot ink, but you can’t use the shield feature when it breaks
- the shield won’t prevent your allies ink
- there are more new weapon categories which haven’t been revealed yet
- there are no other ranked modes outside of the three current options
- the future holds any sort of possibility, but the devs didn't get specific about adding more content like that
- for the modes, they adjusted the rule designs so that players will experience the more interesting aspects