[wDcBKgt66V8WDs]

As an avid Splatoon player, something I've come to learn is that there are players in the highest rank who play mobile and even can't/don't/won't play on a TV. This boggles my mind and should give you an idea that this isn't just for people trying to play simple 2d RPGs that the 3DS already offers. At the same time, it is quite the ploy to push people over from 3DS to Switch via Pokemon.

Since I don't see the Switch on here often, I'd love to bring some other points up about the original Switch that the HN community might find interesting:

* If I play over wifi and someone else is streaming Netflix/Hulu, I experience lag and disconnects. As soon as I plug in to ethernet, no problems at all. Seems bufferbloat and wireless noise are a real problem even on an up-to-date OpenWRT router with ~5 year old hardware.

* Joycons require only a few feet of signal travel and as few wireless devices in the area as possible as well. Also large surfaces like the TV can mess them up. I've found keeping the console in a drawer under the TV that slides out another foot really helps, and putting devices into airplane mode is sometimes necessary, but usually pushing them a couple feet away from the line of sight between devices is sufficient.

I've never experienced such obvious and impactful wireless problems before. I guess latency has never been something I cared so much about either though!

edit: and I should be clear, I'm not super salty about these issues. Maybe I should be, but I play this thing for fun and the engineer in me finds it interesting. Would love to see joycons made for adult hands with wireless signal that isn't awful, but I'm not holding my breath.

[cheschire]

The pro controller is significantly better for the comfort of adult hands. The sticks are just a little too long though, so the travel is a bit far. Might want to look at third party versions.

[ssully]

Also helps that the pro controller actually has a d-pad. I get why the joy cons do not have a dedicated d-pad (for when using a single joy con as a controller), but it is terrible when playing certain games, like Mario Maker, in handheld mode.

[zeta0134]

To contrast this, I found that I much prefer to play Celeste with the joy-con buttons. The Pro's D-Pad is mostly excellent, but it seems a bit too eager to trigger diagonal inputs, which in a tight platformer like Celeste is typically a death.

Of course, the left Joy-con still has those signal disconnect issues...

[Djvacto]

There's a fix you can do if you want to open up your pro controller, basically putting a bit of tape on the lower 3rd of each d-pad sensor helps limit those accidental presses.

[wDcBKgt66V8WDs]

This is true, and I have one and it has much better signal too, but I prefer joycons still. I like having independent hands for both comfort and also the motion controls in Splatoon (which are honestly better than a mouse) make more sense to me with an independent hand than joined hands if that makes sense.

[alias_neo]

Nice points here. The real issues are the Joy-Con, because the Wireless can be solved with an ethernet adapter, but the Joy-Con get crazy drift on the left stick (3-for-3-pairs of them in my case) and the signal is horrific. I used to have the switch docked behind my TV on the stand, but the signal to the left one particularly was impossibly bad, in the end I ended up having to move the switch to line-of-sight which is slightly annoying when you have a nice tidy setup and the switch dock just randomly sitting off to the side, but the disconnects become really, really infuriating when you're 10 feet from the switch it the connection drops constantly.

I haven't noticed such issues with the Pro controller.

What I'd love to see are a more portable dock (I play almost always in TV mode) and a re-work of the Joy-Con that fixes the drift and signal issues.

[neuronic]

My colleague doesn't use the dock anymore because it is nothing but a glorified USB-C power adapter combined with an input for the HDMI signal.

However, due to Nintendo messing up the USB-C standard, this is dangerous and can brick the system! Otherwise, what would work is a USB-C dongle that transmits enough juice to the Switch (but not too much!), has an HDMI input to get the signal to the TV and voila, portability solved.

But no, Nintendo basically ensured that this is Russian roulette which can end up bricking your system.

[alias_neo]

Absolutely, I've considered a bunch of adapters, I even own one for my laptop that _should_ work with the switch, but I don't dare use it having read about issues of the third-party HDMI adapters bricking consoles. If I recall, they're blowing the power fuse because Nintendo is incorrectly negotiating PD.

[wDcBKgt66V8WDs]

I also have drift (maybe?) issues. One of my lefts will sporadically slam forwards and won't register anything else for like 1/4 second which is pretty horrendous in Splatoon. BoTW/Picross eh. One of my rights will pull left until I do a bluetooth re-pair and calibrate. I find it odd that neither of them are consistent? Like why only sometimes, and why the one for a split second and the other until something is done about it?

I've been meaning to get electronics cleaner to test.

[alias_neo]

I've done a fair bit of testing with mine, have even modded my left cons with antenna extensions. There are two issues at play; first, the analogue sticks are crap and a bit of dust, human adult usage, frequent usage, or some combination of the above, makes the sticks register even when they're not being pressed. This results, for example in; if I put the Joy-Con down on the table while in the eShop, it'll bounce around every item all by itself. if I'm in a game, it'll keep walking in a particular direction until i flick/tap/move the stick to stop it.

The second issue is the signal one (hence the antenna mod). I'm an adult male with large hands (I can practically hide an entire Joy-Con in one hand). If you close your hand over it completely, it'll drop signal (the left on in particular) because it has a PCB antenna instead of the off-board antenna like the right con, it also doesn't help, that if you touch the metal strip on the con, you likely ground the signal as that strip becomes a shield; In normal use the metal strip is oriented to the open part of your hand, but with large hands, you're going to touch it anyway.

This second issue with signal loss, causes a very similar effect, in that (usually) the last direction pressed before the connection dropped will continue until it is reconnected.

[wDcBKgt66V8WDs]

Did the antennas help? Of the four, my original right is the worst with signal. The new pair has the drift issues while the original pair still has no drift issues. The new left one is the one that sporadically drifts whereas the new right one is the one that is consistently OK until after coming out of sleep.

As you can see, playing with reliable controllers now requires a bit of a decision tree navigated via the controllers current moods...

[myspy]

Of 120 hours of Breath of the Wild I played 115 in handheld mode. Graphics look better on the screen, kids can watch what they want on the TV while I play.

[wDcBKgt66V8WDs]

Oh that's true, I loved BoTW handheld too. Splatoon is a different animal for me though, I don't know how people do it.

[dangus]

As an OLED TV owner, no way do the graphics do not look better on the built-in screen.

[wil421]

1)Network issues. I have a brand new top to bottom Ubiquiti Unfi setup in my house. The switch constantly tries to connect to my outside AP even though it in the same room as my NanoHD. The UniFi forums have some issues about Nintendo switches not roaming. The switch is not roaming and it causes association errors and timeouts on my dashboard.

2)Joycon drift issues on Mario Kart when using the joy cons split in half for 2 players. No drifting whatsoever in BOTW or others.

All in all it’s a fantastic console with an awesome ecosystem. Lots of old Square and other console ports are being made. I really enjoy playing much more than my Xbox.

[wDcBKgt66V8WDs]

I wonder if you do drift in BoTW but you don't notice? Like my one stick will go 100% forward for 1/4 second which in BoTW really doesn't matter but in MK it'll break a kart drift and that is verrrry noticeable.

Interesting about your Ubiquiti. I've been meaning to spy on my Switch networking behavior. I'm really curious if I can even watch the joycons resync via control frames or something.

[robrtsql]

> As an avid Splatoon player, something I've come to learn is that there are players in the highest rank who play mobile and even can't/don't/won't play on a TV.

Do you know why? I'm curious to know.

I guess that, when you are playing on a TV, you don't have a 'full range of motion' because you need to continue facing the TV, but I don't know of anyone who does a 180 turn in Splatoon by spinning in real life--I was under the impression everybody uses the right control stick to rotate the camera for large motions, and then uses the motion controls for fine-tuned movements.

[wDcBKgt66V8WDs]

Splatoon is interesting in that respect, between handheld/detached joycon/pro controller/motion/stick you have how many different ways to turn all requiring different bio mechanics? Like motion with a pro controller is absolutely not the same as motion with a joycon and is not the same as motion handheld. It's amazing to try them all. I can't hack the pro because in high pressure 180 scenarios, I'm so tuned to huge movements with my wrist and small adjustments with the stick. The pro is reversed.

Anyway, I haven't gotten a good why from everyone I've heard that from but it seems often they just really like handheld mode, playing wherever. Sometimes they're kids living in their parents house.

[saidajigumi]

Vaguely related, I had a lightbulb moment when setting up the A/V system in my current place – literally every single device that needed network would accept an ethernet connection. One switch later and BAM! vastly less WiFi competition.

[wDcBKgt66V8WDs]

Ha! It really makes a difference. If I have my work and personal laptops and phones all in the living room simultaneously and the switch is on wifi, the cons desync and the network lags. Put them all on airplane and the switch on ethernet and absolutely no problems at all. It's pretty incredible.

[liberte82]

I use my handheld exclusively on any non-turned based style games because the input lag on my television for action games is just too noticeable.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

> Would love to see joycons made for adult hands with wireless signal that isn't awful, but I'm not holding my breath.

The WiiMote comes to mind.