Splatoon 3 has a great many number of features to reduce the frustration that would be present without them.
- Players can technically skip the Anarchy Splatcast news report whenever they boot up the game by choosing to have the commentary display on a text box while exploring Splatsville. The only portion of the broadcast that is mandatory is whenever major information about in-game events such as Splatfests, Big Runs, Challenges, and new updates is being shared, which are less bothersome for happening only a few times a month combined.
- Ammo Knights has been reworked in some ways:
- Weapon progression is now separate from cosmetic progression. Cash is used at the other shops, while Ammo Knights exclusively takes Sheldon Licenses earned by leveling up.
- Like with previous games, weapons are gated from the player to help ease them into progression, buying new weapons one at a time. In this case though, it's not a hard gate: if you really, really want a weapon beyond what your current level allows, Sheldon will let you buy it anyway for an increased license cost.
- If you import data from Splatoon 2, you'll get three Gold Sheldon Licenses after your first battle. Gold Licenses can unlock any weapon regardless of level without the increased cost, and give returning players a way to quickly reacquire their favorite weapons from the previous game.
- Starting with Chill Season 2023, the end of each season will gift players a free Sheldon License. So if there's a fancy new weapon coming up in the following season they know they want, they'll have a fresh license with which to buy it as soon as possible instead of waiting to grind it up.
- The Chill Season 2022 update adds a feature that lets you repeat Sheldon's description dialogue for a given weapon. Useful if you need a brief overview of how you might use that weapon, and skipped past his description of every weapon you unlocked from him.
- Like in Splatoon 2, if someone on your team disconnects during a match, the results don't count if your team loses with that handicap. However, now if the disconnect occurs within the first minute of a match, it will end instantly in a "No Contest"; only players who disconnected will eat a loss, and the remaining players aren't forced to play the match with a handicap.
- The ability to save gear loadouts is no longer restricted to Amiibo and now comes in the form of the Freshest Fits feature. You can save up to five loadouts and customize settings specific to each set such as motion control sensitivity, and this can be done both in-game and through the SplatNet 3 phone app, with the latter also informing you of the total ability points granted by your Freshest Fits. For those that still want to use Amiibo figures, they now provide another five Freshest Fit slots in addition to their exclusive gear.
- Ranked Battle from the previous games is replaced with Anarchy Battle, which has two queues: Open and Series. The two queues also have different map/mode combinations, so if you'd rather not play one of the maps or modes in one of the queues, you can still get to match in the other queue instead of having to wait 2+ hours like in previous games.
- You have the option to change loadouts between Turf War matches if you feel like spicing things up, but sticking with the same squad. The option was originally not present in both Anarchy Battle modes to keep team compositions predictable, but it was changed to allow players to change loadouts between queues in Anarchy Battle (Open) when players didn't like that.
- The online multiplayer lobby and the Shoal both now boast their own weapons testing ranges, allowing players to more easily practice and experiment with their chosen weapon, or even just whittle away the time between matches inking the floor before the pressure is on.
- Splatfests now have a "Sneak Peek" objective for the teams to score in, where the team that earns the most Conch Shells per player during the week leading up to the Splatfest weekend gets a healthy score bonus. This enables anyone who can't make it to the Splatfest weekend itself to still be able to contribute in a way by playing.
- Recon mode now lasts a full hour instead of being limited to the time it'd take for the map to end. This provides way more time to plan strategies on the maps, or go sightseeing there.
- If an Angle Shooter dart hits the ground, the direction it reflects in will be fairly flat to the ground, even if you're aiming it down as low as you can. This makes it so that the resulting trajectory will be more likely to hit players instead of shooting into the sky where it can't affect anyone.
- The ranking system exclusive to Anarchy Battle (Series) is structured so that, outside Rank-Up Battles, player performance — measured through the medals you receive at the end of a match — is taken into account. Gold medals represent higher rank point values that will improve your evaluation more than silver medals. While winning is still by far the largest factor on your rank, if you personally did well, that will mitigate some of the rank points you lose. The medals are purely cosmetic in other modes, however.
- New gear customization options have been added so that you have more freedom with fashion choices without sacrificing viability.
- First, attending Splatfests for Super Sea Snails is no longer a must-do to increase the star power of gear; buying a duplicate piece of gear from the three gear stores lets you use cash to increase its star power.
- Next, gear can continue gaining EXP even after all of its available slots are filled; once the bar is filled, you're given a free random ability chunk, allowing you to can continue farming chunks without needing to either swap gears, scrub them, or spending gold or precious Super Sea Snails to reroll abilities.
- Finally, Murch can now change a gear's main ability, albeit for the hefty cost of 45 ability chunks.
- In previous games, Turf War was strictly a solo-queue mode; if you wanted to have friends play with you, you would have to queue up first then have them join, which puts them in the queue for the next match, and even then there was no guarantee that those friends would be able to get in and they might end up on the enemy team if they do get in. Now in this game, you can group-queue for Turf War (much like for open Anarchy Battles, open Splatfest Battles, and Salmon Run), and everyone in your group will be put in the same team.
- Spawner Drones are meant to give players more freedom on rollouts from spawn, but a symptom of this is that there isn't a built-in safe spawn point area players can stand in while shooting away spawncampers. To help reduce this issue, players that launch from their drone instead of superjump gain ink armor for a short period of time, and map design has been tweaked so that spawning players can land on at least one high-ground area that's impossible for enemies to reach without something like a Zipcaster or Inkjet.
- During a Tableturf Battle match, you can press the L button at any time to view your deck, with cards that you haven't played yet being indicated separately from those you have. Useful if you need to make a play that involves creating space for another card to slot perfectly into, and you need to remember if you have yet to play said card.
- If decorations or stickers are obtained from the Shell-Out Machine, the game will prioritize giving you items you haven't gotten yet. Not only does this give you a chance to get really expensive items from Hotlantis for a much lower price, it also avoids situations where you just bought something expensive, only to get a much cheaper duplicate of it from the Shell-Out Machine.
- This game's version of the "do this daily to make significant progress to your Rewards Pass" Sidequest is very lenient compared to contemporary uses of the trope. Other games such as Apex Legends and Deep Rock Galactic ask you to devote multiple 10-20 minute-long play sessions to fill the play per day requirement; Splatoon 3 only requires you to win a single match, and Turf War matches can last as little as 3 minutes. If you're only around for the extrinsic reward, the game won't eat up a significant amount of your time for it.
- After the season ends, the rewards for completing its Catalog will start showing up in the shops, and the catalog's emotes and banner items get added to the Shell-Out Machine, so picking up the game late or taking an extended break from it won't permanently bar you from getting the goodies from them.
- Also, any equipment you earned in a current Catalog immediately also starts appearing in the shops, so you can get a head-start on upgrading its tier without needing to spend Super Sea Snails.
- Starting with Chill Season 2022, you can now reset your Anarchy Battle rank. Useful if you got into a rank that's beyond your skill, since you otherwise can't go back (However, the game can match you up with higher rank players regardless). Also, it's limited to only being used once a season, to reduce abuse from anyone trying to fight in Anarchy Battles where everyone's at a way lower skill level than they are.
- Also starting with Chill Season 2022, Tricolor Turf War allows players to be on the defending team or attacking team regardless of which side is currently in the lead. This makes it so that, in the worst-case scenarios, being ahead at halftime can never be an Undesirable Prize if the Tricolor map's design puts defense at a disadvantage (and, relatedly, it can't cause Unstable Equilibrium if the opposite happens). It also gives players opportunities to play either defending or attacking regardless of what team they chose at the start, instead of being locked into one or the other by factors they couldn't have predicted.
- Fresh Season 2023 increases the number of items sold in the gear shops from 6 to 9, making more of the game's wide selection of equipment available.
- Starting in Fresh Season 2023, a closeout bonus enables you to get extra catalog points during the final week of the update season. Perfect for quickly grinding out the last catalog levels before the season ends proper.
- The jukebox allows you to press the Y button to preview a selected song, so you can make sure you know what you're going to be playing before purchasing that song to play.
- The pools system is a quality-of-life feature that allows players to join lobbies of other players who have chosen the same pool keyword as them. Extremely useful for streamers who want to play battles with viewers, as they can now invite other players without needing to send friend requests using this feature.
- The Goo Tuber has a unique feature of being able to One-Hit Splat opponents using partially-charged shots, whereas other Chargers will require a full charge. The 4.1.0 patch changes it to have a two-stage charge; it works mostly the same as before, only the first stage of the charge indicates when the weapon can splat when it would have been unclear with a partially-filled meter.
- Starting with Chill Season 2023, how much X Power is won/lost after finishing an X Battle series is determined via a minimum amount of power based on your win/loss ratio during them, and players with power levels lower than those on the higher-end of the standings are no longer be able to be matched together. This is unlike all prior seasons, where even though the game tried to pair players of similar powers, all players could be matched together regardless and the only thing certain after finishing an X Battle series was that you could either win or lose 10 power points after winning or losing three matches, but depending on your opponents' power, you could lose a lot of power even if your power was not that high but only win 10 points. While you can still lose a lot of power after the update (and more than before overall, because you can lose as much as you can win), this change at least prevents players from only winning 10 points when winning all three matches as was the case in prior seasons and Splatoon 2 (where you could even win 0 points after winning an X Battle).
