Splatoon 3’s blue ink causes visibility issues for many players during the Splatfest

Splatoon 3 is holding a new Splatfest from November 11 to 13 to celebrate the impending release of Pokémon Scarlet and Pokémon Violet. Players will answer the question, “What’s your partner Pokémon type?” and join one of three sides: Grass, Fire, or Water.

During the Splatfest, each team will battle using an ink color that corresponds to their team. Green ink for Grass, blue ink for Water, and red ink for Fire. However, not long after the Splatfest began, many players began to report that the blue ink was making things difficult to see. In fact, the term “blue ink” has been trending on Twitter in Japan since the start of the event.

Blue colored inks themselves are actually used outside of Splatfests, but since matches during the current event take place at night, all ink colors are given a neon glow. As a result, the blue ink makes things like opponents and the edges of certain objects hard to see.

The red and green inks can also cause problems with visibility, but the red is adjusted to more of an orange, and the green to a yellow-green which somewhat alleviates the issue. The blue ink, on the other hand, becomes an even more vivid primary blue and this makes it difficult to see what’s happening.

The way that people perceive colors varies from person to person. You can find some players who find the blue easy on the eyes but have issues with red. That said, the fact that “blue ink” continues to trend on Twitter could indicate that there are far more people who have difficulty with blue colors.

I (the original author of this article) also felt that the blue ink made visibility worse when I fought against water teams. Particularly during very frantic skirmishes, I found it very difficult to differentiate between the characters and the ink.

Furthermore, in battles between red and blue ink, I got the impression that it made both colors much more difficult to see. Although blue ink was also used during the Splatfest Premiere, the color appears deeper and glossier this time around, which may be the reason that visibility is worse than before.

In order to combat this issue, players have been employing a number of different strategies. The method that seems to be used by most is to switch on the Color Lock option in the in-game settings. This causes the blue ink to become slightly more purple, thereby increasing visibility. However, this also turns the fire team’s ink into a light blueish color, which kind of ruins the team concept.

Other users have recommended changing the display color settings on the Switch console itself. The problem with this method, however, is that there are only the excessive choices of inverting the colors or using greyscale. While the potential benefits will vary greatly for each individual, anyone having visibility issues with the blue ink might like to try changing the in-game or console settings to see if it helps.

In the end, it would obviously be best if they used colors that were easy to see for as many people as possible, rather than having players messing around with settings. Let’s hope that Nintendo makes some adjustments to the ink colors that help alleviate this issue in the next Splatfest.

Written by. Marco Farinaccia based on the original Japanese article (original article’s publication date: 2022-11-12 13:21 JST)