April 20, 2026

a walkthrough of zyf’s competitive mentality

This is an explanation of Zyf’s approach to mentality on competitive Splatoon. I just read it here tonight, and I feel like it’s a mentality I can incorporate into my own philosophy and manifesto. Zyf mentions an old thread regarding layers of Splatoon skill, but I feel personally that isn’t a thread that I can apply yet. It’s a more advanced concept, so I’ll think more about it later.

https://bsky.app/profile/zyfetc.bsky.social/post/3ll3fcvkhzc22

Zyf mentions that the point of this document is to support the goal of becoming as good as they possibly can, which in and of itself is described as “the ability to win serious, organized competitive matches consistently”.

In terms of Mesopelagic, I would view this as being able to consistently win at least two sets in a tournament on the level of Low Ink or less. We don’t necessarily want to find ourselves at the top when we’re done with our journey, but we do want to improve while having fun doing so. Zyf admits this might not be the best document for us to read with that mentality, but I feel like it’s important regardless.

“Playing to Win”

Although I’ve read parts of it, I haven’t fully parsed David Sirlin’s book Playing to Win. I meant to at the beginning of LUTI, but I only finished up to the Sportsmanship section, as I wanted to move on after I read The Art of War as Sirlin has an entire section on it. Later in this week after we have our tryouts, I think I will go back and fully reread Playing to Win.

“No strategy is too lame, no tactic too boring, for the true competitor to use, because the only thing that matters is pursuing the win.” — Zyf

The first thing that comes to mind as an example of this would be stalling the Rainmaker. It’s a boring, uninspired way of winning a match, and yet it is a tactic that works if you are smart enough. Zyf even says that “all that matters is trying at full-strength to win”.

Full-strength does not necessarily refer to but does include things like abusing the rules and rulebooking, which while Zyf doesn’t have a problem with those things, I think that I do. Is it against integrity to do things like that, even if it’s within the spirit of the rules? How much does integrity matter when it comes to wanting to win? Should I value integrity over winning? Or vice versa?

Questions I don’t yet have the answer to.

“My team and I run a non-meta strategy that is arguably sub-optimal (we don’t use cooler). However, we do this not because we want to “push” the strategy but rather because we simply believe it currently gives us the best path to winning long-term.” — Zyf

This is the exact mindset I want Mesopelagic to have I think, it’s something I hadn’t thought about before. Why should we play our weapons if we don’t believe we can win with them?

With recruitment underway, I’ve come to determine that mentality and goals are the number one priority in terms of potential teammates, not weapons (although those are important too. I’ve come to really enjoy wellstring so I hope we can get one on our team, but it looks very likely). We’ve had a few potential tryouts have—to be extremely blunt—poor goals. It’s always “win a tournament” at this level, but my question is always what happens then if we don’t win? If we’re not winning, then will they stick around to experience the journey or will they leave for a team that gives them a better chance of success? I’ve even seen some people (not our tryouts) have a goal of beating a specific team in a scrim. Ignoring the fact that you can’t “win” a scrim, what happens when that team disbands? Now you don’t have a goal anymore.

If everyone has the same goal of winning a tournament, what makes them stand out from the plethora of other players who want to try out for the team? I hate to describe it like a job application, but that’s basically what this is. If a tryout can’t make themselves stand out and truly articulate what they can bring to the team, then I don’t want to risk having them here. Mesopelagic has spent so long building up what we want and finding ways to make do with what we have, and I won’t risk another fuck up anything getting in the way of my pod’s success.

Like Zyf, I have high expectations and standards for those who tryout for Mesopelagic. Call it nitpicking or being overly critical, but I care so deeply about my team and our stability that I will not accept anything less than near-perfection in a 5th teammate.

I believe that no matter what weapon comp we choose, we will prevail over our opponents if we have a 5th member that believes in our goals and is willing to understand that there is a long road ahead of us. Improvement doesn’t simply happen overnight, and winning will take us a long time. It’s our decision-making and weapon knowledge that will carry us to victory, not team compositions. The low-level “meta” is being able to effectively utilize decision-making and capitalize off of an opponent’s flaws more so than it is any weapon choice. I don’t know if it’s in the cards for me to reach the top, but I don’t want to be lazy with my gameplay.

“Seeking Grounded Truth”

“I do remember regularly thinking I was losing because of aim when in hindsight, it was my decisions that were terrible.” — Zyf

It is so important to not lose sight of the real reasons you might be losing, and to not make excuses for what those reasons might be. It’s important to focus on the game in and of itself as it stands before you, instead of worrying about what might be going wrong at all moments. I like the phrase of “we’ll look at it together later”, because it gives me time to breathe and simply play the game. I can analyze and deconstruct my gameplay later. I have all the time in the world.

Zyf mentions reaching out to FLC a lot in the early days, and recommends that to anyone trying to improve. I still feel anxious reaching out to much better players and I honestly don’t think that I could, but maybe one day I’ll try it. I do try to take the advice that I get from others to heart, but it’s really difficult sometimes. I often feel like I’m just regurgitating information and I want to learn on my own, but at the same time I also want to develop my own understanding without being told to think. Maybe part of that is leftover from me wanting to “rebel” against a coach who wanted to change Mesopelagic into their vision of a team, but that’s something to think on further.

I’m pretty curious about this game in general and I do want to reflect and grow as much as I can, but I am missing my own problems in a similar fashion to what Zyf mentions at the beginning of their journey. I want to be the best player I can be for Mesopelagic, and that means pushing myself and making sure my teammates are on the same page as I am.

“Evaluating based on quality, not results”

Zyf discusses at the beginning of this section that the focus on “playing to win” led them to being entirely results-oriented, and how that isn’t a reliable mindset. I agree with Zyf’s statement that Splatoon isn’t a luck-based game: every action you take has an affect on the outcome of the game. You are 1/8th of the game, and your team controls half of the outcome.

“It is vastly more important to focus on how well I/we played, at a moment-to-moment level, not the final outcome of a game or tournament run.” — Zyf

Losing is a natural consequence of competition. It is not possible to be “undefeatable”, especially in a game as volatile as Splatoon. Winning a tournament is feasible for Mesopelagic, but it is not in the cards that we can do that consistently. I don’t want to just win one singular tournament; I want to be consistent enough where we can beat multiple good teams. I don’t care about the placement (even if I do dream of the podium) I care about the quality of our gameplay. If we get low-level banned not by winning but by beating teams better than us, I will be perfectly content. A shiny badge on my profile is nice to look at, but I crave the approval from those who have reached heights I haven’t seen more than a spinning NFT.

In terms of weapons, Mesopelagic has lost against teams that run “less than optimal” comps (wording here is used intentionally: I don’t know how to feel about Zyf’s wording of “terrible” comps). We have also lost (or nearly lost) to people making bad decisions, to people in 4v3s, to people with less experience than we have.

But I have to realize and I have to tell myself that we nearly lost those games because we were the ones who had the worse gameplay, not our opponents. When we get cocky, we slip up and think we can win any fight, we don’t think about what we have to think about, and we lose.

“The opposing comp being bad doesn’t matter if you are not good enough to exploit its flaws. Running straight in at me is not a bad decision if I lack the consistency to reliably punish the obvious play.” — Zyf

I want to play perfectly (within reason), to become a good player, and to play consistently. That means I can only control what I do. Again, I am 1/8th of the outcome. Zyf says the best way to achieve that goal is to focus on the “quality of my average or even worst-case moment-to-moment gameplay”, not results.

There are teams that Mesopelagic have been able to beat consistently. Teams that we are able to easily exploit their flaws. But that doesn’t necessarily translate into concrete results in my own gameplay. I can beat those teams when I’m at peak performance, sure, but I want to be able to beat those teams when I’m not.

“Pursuing the highest standard”

Critical thinking and critical self-review is key to improvement and I will die on that hill. One question that I have for myself, and that I should ask our tryouts, is “am I good enough at pattern recognition to be able to properly explain and understand the poor decisions I’m making?”

This goes back to what I said in the previous section, and also ties into what Zyf says. With inspiration from their teammate Blop, playing perfectly means being able to play as good or better than the best players in the world.

I.E. Japanese players.

“Is perfect play achievable for me?” At the moment, I am not even close. I make too many bad decisions, I stutter over my calls, I lose focus under severe pressure. That is not perfect play. If Mesopelagic were to play in a scrim against FTWin, we would get slaughtered. If I were to 1v1 Kyo, I’m sure I wouldn’t stand a chance. And even then, our top level western teams pale in comparison to top level Japan (SWS25).

I need to watch more Japanese dapple and wiper players. I used to, but I’ve been neglecting it. I know that level of play is achievable, but it is out of my scope with where I am currently in terms of understanding the game. While I feel 3000 XP isn’t easy, I want to aim for at least 2500 XP by the end of the year. As of April 19, 2026 I haven’t yet hit 2000, but I’ve gotten so close I can feel it. If I really think critically about my gameplay and my goals, maybe I can even get 2100 by the end of the season (Fresh ‘26).

When Zyf talks about the common notion that “you should only contribute your fair share to deserve a win” is frankly bullshit and anyone who thinks that way should be drawn and quartered. If you aren’t doing everything in your power to win, then you don’t deserve the win. Sure, while you can do everything in your power to win and still lose, doing the bare minimum is quite frankly unfair to your teammates and your opponents.

It’s so easy to shift the blame from yourself into your teammates (especially in soloQ), but it’s so unhelpful to do that because you don’t actually learn anything. Sometimes you get dealt a bad hand, this is true. But I am sure that players who have 2500xp and 3000xp didn’t constantly get lucky with their team comps and teammates. They get dealt bad hands too, but they still have to play a card. To shift blame is to lose focus. To lose focus is to lose sight of improvement. To lose sight of improvement is to lose the game.

Winning soloQ means carrying, but what does that mean? Zyf uses an example from the Japanese streamer Nepia here (who barely plays comp and is just a really strong shot player). There’s a sequence from the video where Nepia is able to recognize an opening, uses Trizooka on an E-Liter, and getting that pick singlehandedly allowed the team to break through the checkpoint and take the lead while Nepia is in their spawn holding them off on his own. Even against some of the best players, Nepia is STILL able to basically solo opponents.

I’ve noticed this happens when I’m playing soloQ sometimes where I will sometimes go up against teams that has one player who is able to obliterate everyone on my team. I need to be that good, but being that good means learning how to recognize what times are good to push/fall back, when I have an opening to go for a kill, and to work on mechanics that allow me to get away with things I wouldn’t get away with otherwise.

Everyone on a team needs to be pushing for the same standard in coordinated competitive play. If they aren’t, then what’s the point? If others aren’t working hard, then I don’t want to either.

“Acknowledging growth is a nice thing to do”

A shorter section, but Zyf points out that even when things go wrong it’s still important to point out the good in every situation. Being constantly critical of yourself can lead to you thinking that you can’t ever improve. If I curb a bad habit, then that’s a good thing even if I’m still making some other poor decisions.

“Acknowledging progress is motivating and is also a helpful reminder that getting good at this game is an incremental and long process.” — Zyf

Lots of top players have maybe 10,000+ hours across all three games, and I’ve barely scratched 2,500 across all three, so it’s unreasonable to think that I will be able to get that good in just a few weeks. But Zyf also says that setting standards high is what pushes limits, and I will continue to have high standards for myself and for my team.

“Humility”

“It’s not my fault we lost, we lost because you didn’t do [x]”

“Well, I was taking attention behind while y’all were in their spawn so you weren’t doing anything”

“My k/d was better than yours this match”

These are all things I’ve had said to me in games. All thing that people genuinely believe, and it frustrates me to no end. When people talk like this, they aren’t being humble and they aren’t being open-minded. These are people usually on my same skill level, acting like they know better than me or acting like they know everything there is to know about those games. But the truth is they only saw their perspective of the game, not the whole perspective. They only saw what they were doing.

“I think completely dismissing the perspective of others without prior reason to do so is arrogant and foolish.” — Zyf

That said, Zyf does acknowledge that better players are usually right because they have the experience and have typically been where the low-level players are. I remember thinking that watching top level gameplay wouldn’t help me because I barely knew any players who played my weapons or played a comp similar to ours. But now I know the reason people often say “watch top-level” isn’t to copy them, but it’s to understand and pick apart their decisions and positioning.

It’s best to be brutally honest in what you observe from all levels of play, but never settle for “I did everything I could” because that impedes progress. It’s so easy to shift blame and to think “well it wasn’t my fault it was everyone else’s” because we don’t like to think that we did something wrong, but it is necessary to do the required self-reflection if you actually want to get better. Those who don’t are sentenced to falling behind and never catching up. There’s another post from Zyf (that I talk about in my physical journal: ent. 36) about how death in this game is always a mistake, regardless of if you managed to distract or trade or whatever other excuse you can come up with. Being taken out of the game for 10~ is never good, which means it’s important to look back and reflect on why you might have died and how you could have gotten out of a situation without dying (or, not have gotten into said situation in the first place).

I’ll directly quote Zyf’s last paragraph from this section, because I couldn’t put it in better words:

“Lastly, in terms of more broad self-evaluation, I think it is important to be honest about how good you actually are. I do not delude myself into believing that I am top level, or that I deserve access to certain resources, or scrims, or a particular seed. The truth of the matter is that game recognizes game. I am a firm believer that if I (and my team) are good enough, the resources and results I merit will naturally arrive with time; it is simply a matter of becoming a good enough player to deserve them.” — Zyf

“Concluding remarks”

Improvement in competitive splatoon comes entirely from mentality and how you approach the game. At all points, you should be playing at full-strength and using that strength to win your matches. The priority should be to eventually be so good at the game you can play it in your sleep, to not chase results, and to constantly strive to be better. My high expectations for my own gameplay bleeds into high expectations for those who might want to join Mesopelagic or those already on it, and those expectations are grounded entirely in how they view the game. Poor goals and mentality are incompatible with the vision that we have cultivated over the past year, because poor goals means that people lose sight of what really matters: why you're losing and what you could be doing to get better. It is more important to evaluate your improvement by your gameplay quality, rather than the results you're getting, since losing is a natural consequence of competition.

Always strive for the best play you can, which means staying grounded and humble instead of believing you're always making the correct plays and it's everyone else making the wrong ones. Evaluate gameplay from a purely objective standpoint (even if some things are subjective), be self-critical, but don't constantly beat yourself down. It's good to acknowledge improvement even if it's small. Getting good at this game is incremental, and improvement is not always visible. If you aren't humble about your own skills and act like you know everything there is to know, then it is borderline impossible to improve because you aren't open to being wrong, which means you aren't open to learning.