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Hi All,

No worries, we appreciate all sorts of honest feedback.

I think we'll probably make some different type of room options to test different types.
I actually designed all four types before ( garbage send to all equal amount, garbage sent to all divided, targeting, non-targeting but sent to one person randomly)
It's just a matter of finding the right balance for the different type of audiences,
so we're open to all opens at this point.

Localization of Tetris Battle to different languages, and some plans for server restructuring (our concurrents grew  so much that our servers had to be refactored) put us behind on, our work on Arena, but we'll continuously improve it month over month with your feedback.

We're very open, so please don't feel bad or hold back.
We'll appreciate any comments, ideas, thoughts from the community.

We might not have time to reply to each and everyone (sorry got married now, so have to also cater to my wife or there will be no food for dinner) but I'll make sure to read all the feedbacks that you guys provide!

Thank you again for all the support,
and Happy Holidays!

Best,
Ace

Hi Guys,  

Btw,
The new tuning settings were very much influenced by your feedback.
We will provide even more extreme settings in the future.
But are taking one step at time.

Thanks we'll continue to heard out more so that we can make the best Arena ever together.

These problems are all solved with a fractional garbage system.  

Actually we did design a fractional garbage system before
in Hangame's Tetris World ( we wanted to name it Tetris World but TTC renamed it Tetris Worlds  )

There's still things to be solved there as well.
The notable part is that when you divide the attacks,
we need to work out a new rule to scramble..

Even with the same amount of garbage, KO didn't happen the same because
garbage comes in drips and drops, and not like in chunks like in the targeting system.

My heart however, is for trying the fractional again..
I'll just have to think of a way to overcome these issues.

I'd just like to say a huge thank you to acemagic for taking the time to read and respond to comments and suggestions posted here. I'll definitely be checking out your game later this weekend.

And from a developer here in Scotland - Good luck with your changes

My pleasure!
I too really appreciate everyone's efforts here!

I wish I can talk and share more time with you guys..
but with tight schedules and limited resources, I normally get really overwork myself in the week days,
that it's very hard to find the time.

Too bad, I can't invite people for lunch or something like we used to do in the old days.
I think that would be only possible in Seoul or Tokyo where everybody's there.

great responses so far!
The other tetris battle modes promoted me to ~20 rank off bat because i was superior to the rank 1s, but 6p mode did not do that.

I think this is a bug.
I've noticed our qa manager about this, thanks!



Actually, I think asynchronous gaming is just a different design for a different situation.
It's not meant to be better than synchronous type gaming but we're trying to make it as close to as possible to that because it also has great benefits.

(ex. no wait, no critical mass factor.. the fact that you can play multiplayer anywhere anyplace with anyone!)

But I do sense that what you guys are also looking for is a new
product that truly holds to your needs rights?

We are in the process of designing something like that too this year,
so if we're lucky we might be able to release it sometime this year.

We'll try our best, but we take orders too.. so I'll have to see if I can squeeze something like that in our schedule.

Would it be that hard to allow players to set the timings by frame/seconds (including instant DAS) instead of presets?

Not impossible, but a little tricky since we would have to make a custom interface.
The killer part in online is always the QA.
the more customized features there are, more cases to test.

The easier way is trying to give you guys enough presets to pick a one you like.
I'll work on that first and see what we can do in the future.

1) Ok I was at max rank before the change (26 or something) so thats fine then
Speaking of abuse I noticed that i got ranked up when i challenged a live friend way lower ranked than me (like 15 maybe) and i got 2 stars for that, could be abused. Like the balancing u made when playing against friends with having constant garbage at the bottom. Makes playing slower friends possible.

3) This was quite early after the update though  so there were only 2 otheres with max rank on 4p
2 AI and Anonymous (if u want my acc. info I can give you my real name in a PM)
Havent had time to play more so it might be fixed now with more people maxed.
Sounds great with more tuning and things, keep it up!

=====> Thanks, I guess we'll have to turn double stars off for live games.

My idea doesn't remove anything from Super Rotation System. It simply adds a special case for attempting to rotate pieces that have rotational symmetry.

Only when the piece would fail to rotate at all even with any of the kicks, then would it try the other direction. And only if it's an S or a Z (O of course has rotational symmetry, but no kicks).

And yes, I am proposing an improvement to SRS, to be brought up at the next Guideline meeting.

I repeat. My idea allows everything that currently works in SRS to still work, but allows two additional rotation cases that would otherwise fail.

I screwed up in my summary. I meant that if rotation with all four wallkicks fails...

=====> Thanks!
I'll like to try this too!
But TTC currently enforces the super rotation systems,
so I'm not sure if I can get this in the official game.
But I'll try to test first.

I like the uppdates on TF battle, I dont know how good the new customization will help when maxed but it is a good step on the way!, I do hope line clear delay could be brought down to a minimum. (0 or 1 frame or something). But maybe that would cause some problems too, iduno.

Also like the extended range of ranks. From 26 or something to 50.

However I have a few questions on things that seem odd (buggs?)

1. Is is made so that you cannot  skip ranks anymore by being much faster than the opponents fast?

=====> You still should be able to for the lower ranks. but not to the new ranks, as we wanted people to earn these ranks, and not abuse the system by jumping forward by asking friends to play a few games.
If you don't see a special promotion happening on the lower ranks ( ~20 ranks ) it's a bug.
Please let us know!

2. Is it just becouse the 26-50 ranks are new that there is really only small differences between 26-40. (4p)

=====> Yes, we're still collecting the data to retune it more.
Also more ranks will come again and it will be much harder then.

3. The Ai that is often implented at rank 50 (4p) is pumping out times of 18 sec atm, intentional?
Nope. It's either a bug or misbalance.
AIs are really hard to control but thanks for mentioning it.

4. I meet quite a few anonymous at the high ranks too, are they real people?
Anything besides AI should be real, unless it's a bug.
It might our internal staff games, we've hid their names,
and they're ofcourse good because they get paid to play Tetris.

I guess some some of these questions could be answered by that TF battle update just came out which makes sense.

Are u planing to implent more tuning? will there be a way of testing the tuning before bying as in TF so one can know what to spend the money on?

=====> More tuning will come. Testing requires a good UI implementation.
I wasn't able to do that for TOJ either.. but I'll think hard about it.

Love the ideas you have and thanks for talking to us!

======> My pleasure. Sorry I can't come so often, I've really been overworking recently.
I enjoy the talks, but am really short of time.
I'll try to read everything, and reply as much as I can when time is permitted.

Thanks for the support guys!
It really matters for us.

Edit: (bug) Also I sometimes meet anonymous and all are around the 1.20 min time at rank 50 (normal games are under 1 min there) (4p)

cost of upgrades are ridiculously high. been playing on there since I started playing (august), saved my tetris cash, did offers, and used onn my coins, and still couldnt afford maxed upgrades. I am currently 89 tetris cash or 30000 coins off. >.< though the faster softdrop speed and line clear upgrades are nice to have available

Sorry for that. We're actually still in the process of balancing.
The system will be giving out more coins in the future to complete the balance.
Also, there will be more ways to earn coins at a higher rate too.

The flip side of the ridiculously fast A.I.at high levels is the lack of reasonable speeds for some of the other replays in 4p. There are some that are soft dropping each piece and are on pace for 4 to 5 minute 40 lines times. I've seen this at rank 45 too.

There really needs to be some retooling there.

My main pet peeve is that the sprint 4p and 5p games continue not to track record times.

Sorry, actually could be a bug that's happening after opening up to more ranks.

paul that bug was reported a long time ago and reported by me again not so long ago. dont expect a fix to come any time soon.

Hmm.. funny why I wasn't report about this.
Thanks guys for letting me know.

I'll get our guys to fix this!

So far, the reduced garbage tables in NP match all the spins I listed. TST should be the same as well. There are also no minis.

I'll try to find out more about the b2b and how combo and normal attack garbage are distributed.

Code Select Expand

        // 1-2P, 3P, 4P, 5P, 6P
        {0, 0, 0, 0, 0},    // Single
        {1, 1, 0, 0, 0},    // Double
        {2, 2, 1, 1, 1},    // Triple
        {4, 3, 2, 2, 2},    // Four
        {1, 1, 0, 0, 0},    // T-Mini-S
        {2, 2, 1, 1, 1},    // T-Single
        {4, 3, 2, 2, 2},    // T-Double
        {6, 4, 3, 3, 3},    // T-Triple
        {4, 3, 2, 2, 2},    // T-Mini-D
        {1, 1, 0, 0, 0},    // EZ-T

        {0,0,1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,4,5}, // 1-2 Player(s)
        {0,0,1,1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4,4}, // 3 Player
        {0,0,0,1,1,1,2,2,3,3,4,4}, // 4 Player
        {0,0,0,1,1,1,1,2,2,3,3,4}, // 5 Player
        {0,0,0,0,1,1,1,1,2,2,3,3}, // 6 Payers

It's a little funny, but they've used one of my old designs that while I was working for them.
(exact TTC guidelines changed the hierarchy and balance a little)
This was called a variable attack balance system based on number of active players.

The very old hangame version didn't actually have this,
so the game will be very fast paced when it's 5~6 players, but suddenly drag alone forever when there was only 2 players left. ( It used a simple system where it gave 3 lines of attack to everyone for Tetris, and 1 line of attack to everyone for Triple)

The thing I didn't like about this variable system is that

Your strategy changes with # of players.
For example combo starting point and double gets affected by this.
Also with maps, we've noticed that the game play time is not consistent anymore.
Some games will end in like 3 seconds which shortens the life-span of the game
and makes balancing of the rewards or rating systems very hard.

Because of that on my later designs, I've put the counter action system inspired by PuyoPuyo.
*Tetris DS was build after I've released a version with that system in Korea so I'm guessing it's the influence.
(TTC shares the information to all the new licensees)

i would also like to hear honest answer for this question.

hmm. can't really comment that deeply on this one..
but let me just put it this way.

Our company is currently putting a lot of efforts to try to establish as a top developer on the facebook platform..
so that's where you'll see most of the development efforts fruiting.

It doesn't necessarily mean that there won't be any updates on other platforms,
but I would just say for now that you'll probably see the most action happening in facebook
as that's where we have the most amount of users.

But I'm sure if development resources are permitted,
there might be more things to come in the future.

I think it's a little different from TOJ's case,
since I think TOJ moved their focus to flash based games instead of download.

acemagic, if your dream is to play tetris with Michael Jackson, this is how you do it: http://arcade.svatopluk.com/jeil/final_tetris/ .

Wow. This is really inspiring. I'll have to try this game for myself!!!

And I like the game name too.

The final tetris, kind of reminds me of final fantasy.

I have the max upgrades and it is still pretty slow. I honestly don't see much difference its only slightly faster. Autorepeat should be way faster + soft drop. Line clear is pretty good.

Thanks for the feedback!!

I left some room open so that I can hear out from you guys before
introducing the rest of the settings.

sorry for double post, but this seems the more appropriate place.

eh dunno if this is a bug, but at 45+ rank it started to pair me against A.I, which constantly was 18-20 second sprints in sprint 5p. Uhhh i get 2nd everytime? pretty annoying :/

other things:

Items are very expensive, although i guess thats why the offers are there

the handicap is too strong for ranks 30-50 when playing friends, especially when the sprints dont really get any faster

6p isnt promoting me early like the other games, therefore i send 140 lines while guy in 2nd sends 1

Thanks, I'll get our QA team to check this.
and thanks for the feedback about the item prices.
If you can suggest some price points, that'll be even more helpful!!

We'll look into the handicap system again.
Yeah, I'm looking for a better balance. I too agree that Sprint especially needs to be a little better.
If you have some good suggestions let me know.

6p isnt promoting me early like the other games, therefore i send 140 lines while guy in 2nd sends 1
==> sorry didn't quite get this, could you maybe explain this again for me?

All efforts greatly appreciated!!

Well Battle 6P is a strange game.

Here' is my idea on how to play.

Real human's get full targetting.

Replays can't truly target.

So instead, they send fractional garbage to all live humans, and the rest to their chosen target among the replays. That way, human's don't get unlucky death spikes from a group of replays that just HAPPEN to target them.

I actually agree. I'm considering of going back and improving the old design I've designed when I was working in Hangame. The all attack system instead of targeting. Also, recently I was in a way thinking that 6p targeting is a little too much, might be a better system right around 4p as the wait is shorter.

Ohh, nice. Would love if there would (in the future) be stats in real time(like tetris zone), or in the replay so one could se the differences over time.

That's a pretty cool idea too.
I think Bejeweled Blitz used to have (or still does) something like that.

I'd like to see the LPM/TPM and APM overtime myself too.

"There's a very good way to get the fairness of "send to all," but the pace of 1v1: a fractional system."

A 1v1 pace for a several player game is too slow. The length of guideline games is relatively long, slowing it down further only frustrates the dead players. There is no incentive to attack because the safer option of cancelling garbage and downstacking is superior for survival.

In practice, I've encountered several flaws with the garbage division system. It does not achieve the same feel as a targeting system. The garbage distribution might be similar but the timing is different and this creates a very different feel to the game. It gives rise to Tetris DS like tactics where you stack around the garbage hole in anticipation of the next garbage lines, which never appears in TOJ. In a 6 player game, it starts off like super easy Tetris DS -> normal Tetris DS -> ... -> TOJ 1v1.

A better way is to send each attack to the player who has received the least lines taking into account lines sent by each player so that a good player isnt disadvantaged. I think Wojtek suggested something like this, but here is my take on it.

Eg: There are 4 players.
Now it's B's turn to send lines.
B can send it to A, C or D.

How does B decide which player to send lines to?
Does he send to A? Compare the lines A has received, C has received (excluding lines sent from A), and D has received (excluding lines sent from A).
Does he send to C? Compare the lines C has received, A has received (excluding lines sent from C), and D has received (excluding lines sent from C).
Does he send to D? Compare the lines D has received, A has received (excluding lines sent from D), and C has received (excluding lines sent from D).
Send it to the player who deserves lines or to a random player if it is tied.

This way, sending lines does not affect you negatively since your line sends are subtracted in the comparisons. In theory, a system like this should keep the same feel as a 6p targeting game and it would be fair. I haven't thought about it in too much depth though, it may not work at all...

I still believe that >2 player games should be fast. No one wants to wait. Send to all without any divisions or reductions is the best. Waiting times are short, the games are intense, the best player wins the majority of the times, there is potential for other players to win. In short, it is the superb multiplayer that Tnet2 players all know of and love, only guidelined.

=> So in short, since in a counter action system, sending lines as form of attack doesn't have as much advantage... send it to the users who is sending the least?

Hmm.. interesting. I'll have to see how it will work with the current KO system,
but does seem quite interesting to me.

I'll check it out in the future and let you know. (sorry but probably not this month since I have to go to Korea to renew my visa)

From what I observed about the "divide hole change percent" setting, I didn't like it for large games either. I wound up seeing quite a lot of very long, straight, holes. An alternative might be instead to not make it random: make it change, for sure, every N attacks; possibly allow it to change randomly in less than that, but don't allow it to exceed a "tetris" in depth...

As for 1-2-3-4, a possibility for not making combos overwhelming here lies in another thing I'm playing around with right now: mutually exclusive attacks. In this system, instead of adding line clear/spin attack to combo attack to perfect clear attack, it simply takes the highest of these and uses it. In this fashion, the most you would send is 4, and your combo leadup would depend on the attacks used to get it. If they were all singles, you'd see 1, 2, 3, 4, 4... (or 5?); if they were more, you might see something like: 4, 3, 3, 4 (Tetris, triple, single, single).

Hmm.. interesting concept.

It does occur to me that yes, maybe we should have them really do combination attacks instead of just
single-single-single style combos.

I totally agree with you that exploring more options just than giving more lines is probably a better way to dig.
Maximum garbage, or multipliers, or... even garbage hole alignment or patterns might be a good place to start I guess.

I don't believe a great deal of attack comes from doubles in three wides, but you'll note that I did state I am using it in conjunction with a much modified combo table as well, so four wides aren't overwhelming. It's also being used with all-spins. Other factors may need to be balanced, but it is an option to consider is all I am saying.

Edit: I think we're getting off track a little, here, anyway. Remember that the game we are discussing has solid garbage! How does this affect things? Well, messy vs clean is worthless in this case. The only counter to attacks is to attack equally. Nerfing combos is especially important here since you can't use the garbage you receive to help counter them if it comes to that. I also think that, in general, the attacks should probably be on the mild side since, once again, you can't utilize the garbage you've received so the primary focus is on racing to output. This kind of game would emphasize spikes and efficient attacking, so I think Tetrises will get the go-by. Tetrises seem mostly used in TOJ-style play because of the clean garbage, and that won't happen here.

If you want to emphasize Tetrises, I think you really have to make T-spins and combos a lot weaker or harder to pull off. Combos are probably going to be the most effective because they have potential to generate a massive spike that will KO your opponent's ghost, particularly at the  beginning if they are stacking up still.

Actually our solid line garbage system has bombs, so similar tricks can still work in some sense.
(the tf.com version doesn't have it but Facebook Tetris Battle has this)

Does this mean tetrisfriends is going to stop being developed or are you guys going to develop tetris battle and tetrisfiends at the same time.  I really don't care what the answer to this question is I just don't want to spend all my time on a game that is essentially dead when I could be playing tetris battle in order to earn all the upgrades so I can compete at the highest level there.
    Now about tetris battle.  From what I have played so far I think tetris battle may be less laggy than Tf which is a major plus.  That may just be me and the fact I can only afford level 2 das.  The thing I didn't like about tetris battle which was especially apparent in 4p  sprint is that from about level 30-50 the skill level of you opponents was more or less equal.  In fact the fastest guy I faced was level 30 with a 51 second sprint.  On level 50 I was facing guys with over a minute sprints.  I think that is pretty lame.  How can people call them selfs a tetris god when  a level 30 is that much faster.  Tetris Battle 6p and 2p was the same way with 2p being the best.  
     I think this game already has better game play than tetris friends with all added tunnings.  The thing I find frustrating is why don't you guys add all this stuff to Tetris Friends or some how connect Tetris battle to Tetrisfriends so I don't have to do all those surveys and stuff to get all the tunning twice.  Also I hate the idea of two games from the SAME company competing against each other for users.  It don't make sense to me.

I can't really comment on future of tetrisfriends.com as I'm only involved in facebook Tetris Battle app.
But I can just say that our team is putting tremendous efforts to trying to make Tetris Battle better.

Around March, you might see another series of updates which includes more tuning, more items..
and hopefully more modes too.

Yes, I agree it is a little funny how it is right now.
But hopefully we can find a way to resolve those issues for you guys.

Oh, and I do admit, our primary focus until now was on Battle 2P,
and trying to make the realtime gameplay and matching system better.
But after we get that fixed, we'll start re-balancing Sprint 4P, Battle 6P.. handicap & garbage systems and also bring out more modes to the game.

I'm a bit short in hand right now but really trying my best.
Nothing excites me more than seeing our fans happy.

Here's an idea for combos.

Use the current table, but modify it so that half of the lines added by the combo parts only count for defense. If it doesn't divide evenly round in favor of sending real lines.

If your combo step would add two lines on from the combo itself, one of them would only be applied against incoming garbage, and only one would actually be sent to the opponent.  

Combine this with requiring pieces to be places somewhat rapidly to stall attacks, and we might have something useful but not overpowered.

Thanks for the feedback!
Sounds interesting.

[spectator friendly]

Thanks acemagic for wanting to hear the community out on this.  

This community consists of players from many different Tetris game backgrounds, so it's tough to completely agree on 1 set of standards.  

Here are my own choices and reasons:

1) DAS 133, AR 8.  Personally I like to use something a bit faster, but this is fast enough and easy to control.  It doesn't require players to get accustomed to instant gravity that a small percentage of players use and seems like an easier transition for casual players.

For soft drop speed I'd like something faster than TF, maybe #5 on TOJ, but not instant firm drop that some players love.  I feel as though firm drop messes up the balance between tspins/tetris/combos and also pushes a games balance towards speed over skill.  Since you're talking about rebalancing though, this might not be an issue.  There are places a firm drop cannot reach that a soft drop can, and in my opinion a really fast soft drop would satisfy even firm drop fans.

For line clear delay I would be happy anything faster than TF's line clear delay.  To me TF's line clear delay seems quick enough already but I know many players want it faster so maybe half of that.

3) There's a Dig Challenge mode on the fan-made NullpoMino which alongside 40 lines is the most popular singleplayer mode I see being played.  Garbage rises on a players field and increases in speed over time until the player tops out.  Blockbox and TetriNET had something similar to this called survivor mode and it was played heavily on those games as well.  I think modes like this are very addicting, here's a video of it:

6) Real-time multiplayer with good spectator/chat support is a must!!  Live interaction with other players and the social aspect of live Tetris is what makes matches/practice/making Tetris buddies fun.  You can't talk to a replay.

7)  What ideas do you have on the rebalancing?  To use an existing game as a template, I'd choose TOJ.  I know that many players love TOJ's gameplay and feel it's very well balanced.  Japanese players and a majority of the community would agree.  Hangame on the other hand looks too speed based to me, and less about skill.  Games that fall into that speed over skill balance are no fun to watch, which many players saw during the Burger King Hangame tournament: http://harddrop.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=1605

That being said, there are some interesting concepts that Kitaru has brought up before so hopefully he can post about them here.  They would need some heavy testing though to see how they affect balance.

Hi Blink.

My pleasure. I always enjoy talking with fans of Tetris because I myself is a fan as well.

1) This is quite interesting. If I can gather some more information on what hard core players prefer, I can try tweaking things to support it. It's really more helpful, because you've provided the exact settings you're looking for.

3) I'll look into this.

6) Actually yes, it's coming. But when I don't know yet. Scheduling is the toughest, but we need to be able to hit a critical mass before it will really take off in facebook. We already have the technology,
but making a commercially successful product requires beautiful execution.

7) TOJ's setting actually was made by me, so I appreciate the fact that you like it.

Facebook's audience is a lot more casual.. and there's actually more than 50% of users who can't do double, triples, or even Tetrises.

The new setting I've been looking into is a setting where
attack lines are awarded from single instead of starting from double.
I call it the 1-2-3-4 setting.

The concern here is that this might somewhat negate the power of Tetris..
but since there is B2B which awards 50% bonus. It might still be effective.
Also doing 1 Tetris is faster than doing four singles because of the line clear delay.

With this setting, Combo, will have to be re-adjusted so that it is triggered starting combo 2 instead..
which is actually not so bad, since we want to different people from doing combos intentionally, and accidentally. ( to make the rules more obvious, the current setting we use seem to confuse users as sometimes doing a single will send garbage, sometimes it doesn't)

I'm also considering bring the rule I've put in TOA, which is what i call no flush on counter,
inspired by PuyoPuyo 2s system. This helps create some breathing room while, people build up the combos..
and also give more chances to counter like in PuyoPuyo.

Now, T-Spin is the question...
I'd like to actually explore two things..

Re-establishing the hierarchy.
T-Spin Single actually only happens when someone fails a double.
Should I just merge T-Spin mini into Single to make it simpler?

Also, some people argue, that T-Spins (Zero; T-Spin with no line clears) should still award something.
What would be a good balance for a perfect clear?

what would be the best condition for speed increase in the game.
In Battle, currently, the speed never increases..
In TOJs I've made it so that it increases with time.
In Hangame, we made it so that it increases by line clears made by everybody.

Lastly, the targeting system for a 6p game.
In hangame We've designed an attack all system.
In TOJ, we combined it with nintendo DS's targeting system so that people can snipe.

The both have pluses and minuses.. so sometimes it's hard for me to choose.
Should I just design a new one?

Thanks and I'd like to hear out more from you guys,
so when I make this new version, all bases are covered even better than before.

1) Faster is not always best for DAR, but for AR, faster is always better =]. (Unless you're blink or someone else who uses skill-stops.) That said, I like 80-100ms DAR, and 0 or 1 AR.

Tetris Friends uses around 200ms for line clears, which is okay, but the faster the better. Perhaps if you must use line clear delay for multiplayer modes, you could use zero line clear delay just for Sprint? I'd like to see some World Records set on a licensed game (Tetris Friends has one player so far who has gone sub 30 seconds, but in fan-games that don't use line clear delay, we have players who can manage under 25.)

===> Thanks for the feedback. This is exactly what I need to hear out.

3) A speed-based garbage-clearing single player mode. Tetris Evolution allowed something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0g8tDurevz0 . But unlike that video, I'd like to see two differences: A) you start with X garbage rows, and you win when you clear the bottom-most row (faster the better), and B) an algorithm which prevents lucky starts. As you see in that video, the guy starts with a 4 row column. What happens is players will restart over and over until they get a lucky field. So, it's a good idea to make it so all starting fields are equally lucky/unlucky (unlucky would be when you get two holes back and forth next to each other). One idea is to make garbage holes 10-bag, kinda like the piece randomizer, but a hole hits each of the ten columns before going on to the next bag.

===> Interesting.. maybe I'll just make something like this into a mode or mission or something.
The garbage hole bag system is really cool idea too!

6) An Elo-type skill-based rating system instead of an accumulative-type "time-invested"-based rating system.

===> There's actually a pro and con on both, So recently I've designed more over a hybrid.
TOJ used a XP system which is more time-invested based, but lose skill representation because the # of users are small. In a strict rating system (the one old hangame used to use) the there are two issues,
one is that the matching because picky.. (people will ban/kick people out or refuse to start when somebody with low ratings comes in or stays in the room), second it's too easy to abuse. (using two accounts to farm rating points)

So my goal is trying to make a rating system that best combination of the three,
and also in consideration of how many players are available.

7) More or less, the general consensus on this forum is that T-Spins require way more skill and risk than Combos. Yet in Tetris Friends, 4-wide Combo openings can do very well against T-Spinners. This may be too extreme, but I'd like to see a big time Combo nerf (unless you're willing to take Combos out altogether: PS3 Tetris has no Combos, and the gameplay is very good.) What I'm thinking is something like this:

0 garbage, Combo 1
1 garbage, Combo 2
1 garbage, Combo 3
1 garbage, Combo 4
2 garbage, Combo 5
2 garbage, Combo 6
2 garbage, Combo 7
3 garbage, Combo 8 or higher.

Might be extreme, but it should do the trick.

I think, T-Spins was less rewarding because of the delay of softdrop.
With tuning however, that is somewhat helped.
Maybe I can think of something else to help T-Spinners.

Nerfing combos, is an option, but we do have to focus on the fact that actually Tetris style is still the majority.
So giving T-Spinners some more benefits might be helpful.
(ex. let b2b of T-spins stack up?)
maybe we can gather some good ideas for that.

AR/rate - 60hz or Instant ("9G"); 30hz (like Tetris Splash) at bare minimum.
DAS/delay - subject to player preference; TF.Com's 6~16 frame range (@ 60fps) is alright, but I don't think there is any exceptional reason to enforce a limitation (other than perhaps trying to adhere to a free-to-play w/ item shop model). 4 frames is basically the lower bound for what anyone would think about using at this point in time.

Line Clear delay - zero; given how guideline multiplayer is designed at the moment (otherwise zero entry delay, poor Initial System options that are just there to get cope with line clear delay eating inputs), it probably makes most sense to just ditch it entirely. If it were using a Sega/TGM-style model, maybe this would be a different story.
Soft Drop speed - 1~2G or 20G (TGM's sonic drop); some players are attached to soft drop fixes and would appreciate a buff to soft drop speed without going instant, but both recovery styles can be supported by allowing individuals to tune this to their preference.
Perhaps rotation rule/kick table combinations.
I don't imagine we'll be seeing any TGM-style modes? Well, puzzle modes like Tetris Plus or Tetris with Card Captor Sakura are always neat if the levels are put together well.
Items are tricky... For now, I'd say I can think of more items that I wouldn't like to see in the games than ones I'm particularly interested in seeing added. In particular, please do not reverse, scramble, or lock player controls. TGM's Roll Roll is sort of acceptable seeing as you can fight against the rotations without having to change the way you think about moving the pieces, but anything else is just plain infuriating.
So, it's Reverse ACE...? ARS with SRS colors was already pretty odd. I guess you could use it to display your "true colors," but it's probably more confusing than useful without a rotation table change to go with it.
EDIT: Yep, this looks just as supremely uncomfortable as I thought it would. It's funny how badly this messes with my sense of things.
More info displayed regarding incoming garbage -- either via TGM3-style display of garbage content below the field or some sort of demarcation on the garbage meter showing where the attack chunks fall. I'd be more interested in this sort of feature in a game with real Change On Attack garbage as it would help make quick decisions regarding when to accept nice garbage or counter messy attacks without having to stare at your opponent's field and hoping you're reading the choppy updates correctly.
I'd like to investigate various mechanics with regards to attack sending, but I'm not sure how useful any of it will be for a game without real garbage like Tetris Battle. (Sorry to say it, but I still don't believe that that a replay-based system like this can amount to much more than a bloated single player experience.) Although it may not be an exact fit, I can still explain some of the concepts so you can gauge if there is some sort of application that suits your needs.

One approach that may afford some leeway in balancing a Change On Attack system like the one seen in TOJ is tweaking the way attack chunks are added. For example, we could potentially add a b2b tetris as +4 +1 to differentiate it from a b2b TSD that adds a straight +5. It may also come in handy when balancing the ever-controversial combo. An extreme example would be to force combo adds to be considered as part of the previous attack chunk -- that is to say, that combos should always add in a straight line if not mixed in with other types of attacks. I don't believe this approach is usable as-is, but it certainly would make a combo starter more of a risky all-in if it was dealing out a lot of clean garbage.

Another mechanic that I don't believe has been fully explored is strategic garbage -- giving the player control over how and where garbage adds. In the TGM series, garbage sent is based on the position, orientation, and shape of the piece being used to clear lines.

One concept I would like to test is allowing the player to send strategic attacks rather than standard Change On Attack random garbage by performing twists. The controversial aspect of this idea is that it isn't precisely clear where it should fit in with the concept of attack countering that now exists. Let's say for example that we change a t-spin double to send a messy two line attack like a T double would in TGM. Should the valuation of this attack as it relates to sending or countering attacks still be +4? Should spins in general instead add at face value? Should certain moves exist outside the realm of countering or be subject to removal only after all other attacks have been removed from the garbage queue? I don't think I can answer any of these questions until they have been put to trial.

Along similar lines, we could take an alternate approach to combos by allowing them to remain as strong in valuation (or perhaps stronger) but preventing them from adding all at once. Combos could instead be geared toward applying constant pressure over time by limiting them to adding one line per turn rather than flushing all at once as with other attacks. When combined with the previously mentioned concept of forcing combos to add in the same hole as the previous attack, there is strong incentive to mix up combos with other types of attack to ensure that attacks are well-distributed and not too many combo adds pool up for the opponent to return as a tetris. There would also be a lot of room to play with the "flow rate" of combo adds, either by increasing throughput if the match is sufficiently long (as in the Margin Time mechanic in Puyo Puyo 2 onward) or when the number of combo attacks in the queue reaches a sufficiently high value.
While I like the idea Combo Block mechanic on its own, I think it is part of the reason combos are so problematic. Combos don't really need the benefit of the block in addition to their tremendous attack power. I think part of the reason that 4-wide didn't take as much of a hold on Tetris Splash despite sporting the same damage potential is that starting the combo does not make you immune to incoming attacks.
I somehow managed to miss this amidst all the mechanic-centric discussion, but this is pretty key.
That table doesn't look too bad to me, though I recall some sensible tweaks like that being met with vehement opposition in old threads discussing combo balance. Personally though, I think exchanging the one-hit KO power for a lengthened messy start is a pretty favorable trade.

Thanks Kitaru,
this is some really good feedback, that kind of give me new ideas.

So far I see Tetris as a straight in boxing. Direct but efficient.
Combo is a fast 1-2-1-2 Jab, so maybe we should add more benefits on doing combinations,
and lower the attack in volume. Also combo is useful as a judo move, since you can use garbage to send garbage (however true for the Tetris style too if the garbage comes in a line)
T-spin is a like a hook or upper cut, with power, and also has the benefit of executing in small areas
(more beneficial in a situation like TOJ's concrete coming up) so let's keep discussing to find a good mechanic /benefit we can put on each styles.

If each style has it's own unique benefits, I think that's probably the best way to make it worth while for people to switch styles.

1) agree with others, TOJ settings but not too expensive. Though I guess in a way it would be fine for us more skilled players who can win rubie crowns but for others it would prove harder. So I guess I would be fine with current price scaling. note: though I would like it to be free so rubies can be spent on your rubie games instead, feels like noone from here plays em anyway - duno If thats the case for others.
Also understand that getting tokens to buy customization is a good way to get people to play, so keep prices if that is the case is my oppinion.

3) Any survival mode designed to kill you, so it requires no thinking of optimising points per line, minute or whatever, just surviving.
Also Arena options for arena with like 5KO/2min (1v1 single player style) games could be cool, this way people might like items too since a stroke of luck for the opponent wont make u lose the whole game.

4) Paul676's idea of 20G item looks cool. I generally think that most of the items are difficult to deal with when playing with fast opponents, there is items that pretty much one shots people when at high speeds.

6)

• More spectator friendly arena play, larger 1v1 screen so it can be easily viewable when playing tourneys and larger text on what for happens e.g "tetris" "T-spin double" and the like for spectators (spectators only!). Overall everything that makes tourneys easier I think would be great. (free/cheap customization would also contribute in a way)
• More stats, not on profile but like at least as in tetis zone, I really only miss seeing tpm lpm.
• TF PMs?
• Availability for more friends (think there is a cap atm - could be anoying for tourney organisators or people with teams.
• (not as important - Connect FB tetris with TF. But i really dont care too much atm, the other things are more important)
• rank skill > games played on arena highscores. Or at least fix the weird top 20% thing. (hope you know what I mean) - But once again this gets people to play and i rather have low highscores than no opponents.

7)Agree on Combo being too strong, but dont nerf it too much. I like the idea of changing the mechanics of it rather than the lines sent. However I belive that the short ds combo should not be nerfed, only the 4 and 3 wide set ups. Maybe as suggested before by capping lines sent at some point so large combos suffer, not the short ones.

Also duno if you guys are thinking like this but when Blizzard is doing balances to SC2 they they claim to spice the changes a bit in order to see any reactions. What I mean is that if the change is too small people will go on with the same strategies and not notice that T-spins are in fact stronger or whatever you may change. Wont probebly be a prob. for us as we are more aware of the changes but if you think that lower speed play also is broken you should consider this.
Edit: Noogy proposal rocks!

Thanks Alex, I actually just realized.
LPM, APM and those were stats actually I used to emphasize a lot in hangame and TOJ versions..
in the facebook version I have forgotten about it completely.

Yeah, I should start bringing back the stats because it's really fun to analyze the styles.

Spectator and tournaments are costly systems to build, so probably won't be able to do it anytime soon.
but hopefully we project becomes more successful, we can have the chance!

my proposal - a tetris finesse trainer

overview:
it really only takes three things to be good at tetris: speed, technique, and finesse.
now finesse and speed are generally useful across all tetris games, while technique is specific to each game (depending on spin bonuses, garbage types, etc.) as of now, there are tools out there to help you train speed/stacking and down-stacking: 40L and dig challenge, but there isn't a tool for proper finesse

now lets compare playing tetris to typing
when typing [words/sentences], there are three things you take into consideration

what you type - using bigger vocabulary and proper punctuation could be compared to very good tetris technique (efficient spins) and clean stacking
how fast you type it - higher wpm could be compared to high tpm
how you type it - how your fingers correspond to each key on the keyboard, this can be compared to finesse

some people could argue that if you want to be faster at 40L, learning finesse is key. however, many people have bad habits and are unwilling to drop those bad habits when playing 40L because it is actually faster for them to do it "their" way. (i.e. triple right rotate an L piece rather than taking longer to "think" and left rotating)

what tetris is like now:

someone who is very new to computers tends to type with two index fingers, poking at the keys in order to make words. eventually, they become faster pokers and can pretty much go about their day poking keys when doing things that require minimal typing
when using a typing program to teach typing, people are taught several concepts (fingers on home row, knowing which finger to use for which key)
no one is really "taught" how to play tetris by another person; they just know the keys and eventually find a way to get a piece from point A to B, sometimes not caring how many keypresses it takes

what the finesse trainer does:

the finesse trainer will focus on 2-3 generic keyboard layouts and help players improve finesse by emphasizing specific key presses per piece.
just like how a typing program starts out with really easy stuff (like alternating between K and J with your index finger), the finesse trainer will begin with easy things like DAS'ing a certain piece to the wall over and over again.
for beginners, the program would have you DAS a piece to the wall, and then as soon as you dropped the piece, the field would clear and have you do it again. It would then have you do other placements like DAS to the wall and tap one space back, always clearing the field after the piece placement. As the difficulty goes up, the program would ask you to do more piece placements before the screen cleared.
so for advanced players, the program could teach you TKI 3 by having you place 6 pieces in exact order (and clear the field and make you do it again)

finesse trainer features:

- a fixed ghost shadow showing where the piece should be (similar to words popping up on the screen while you type under them)
- a panel somewhere outside the tetris field that shows the keypresses required for the current piece (like a red arrow can mean DAS left/right while a blue arrow means tap)
- a chart somewhere to the side that shows exactly how many seconds it took to place that piece (so after doing 100 random placements, you can see which piece placements you need improvement on)
- a "free play" mode where you play for about 1000 pieces or so, with an AI that makes you do more of a certain piece placement that you keep screwing up
- a 40L mode where the AI gets to pick where your pieces go, and you get points based on how many proper placements you make. there can be a formula combining points & speed and a leaderboard for it as well
TL;DR - learning tetris the way you'd learn typing

This is really a cute idea.
The Tetris academy program to train professional tetris players.

If we do make something like this, all credits to you on the inspiration

1. Possibility for Instant AR! Definitely!

If you are going to make presets for DAS/AR please make more than 5, so that it will be easier to find our comfort level. Plus if there are more then we can have more to unlock at a cheaper price per unlock.

Another option is to give us the option to have custom das once we unlock all the presets! That would be perfect and still be good with the masses!

2. Double rotate!! Make sure it doesn't have insane wall kicks

3. Softdrop speed/ line clear delay presets

Again if you do presets allow the last one to be instant if possible, if not make it very fast!

4.  Dig Challenge!!

5. Proper IHS/IRS

6. Live games!

7. Balanced combos! 10+ combos shouldn't be an instant top out for the other player -_-

If you do all these things you would already make the best official game in existence

Optional: T-spin Doubles send 3 , Tspin triples send 5 , all types of tspin singles send 1

This is a more legitimate way of balancing t-spins if you have a faster soft drop. The answer isn't to have slow soft drop but to weaken t-spins directly, since they are the cause of the unbalance.

If this change would be made then tetrises would have more use. T-spins would still have more add per line but they wouldn't make other types of line clears useless.
   
umm no. If he learned finesse he would be sub 23 easily. Just because people can be fast without it doesn't mean its not useful.

Check out my keyblox record sometime... Its 1 kpt and its 3 seconds better than my best nullpo time.

Actually, we're preparing for the next stages of tuning already.

I'll look into if we can cover these areas as much as we can.

Btw, the how did you guys feel about tuning of the bag and the extended placement in TOJs version?

Hi Everyone,

I'm the lead designer for Tetris Battle,
and I'd like to hear out what your thoughts on a few topics I'm researching right now,
to make a better game for core users as well.
Before we were more focused on the masses (sorry got make a living. )
but now I'll like to put some more efforts to cater to our best and most customers whom I believe is here

1)
the ideal DAS/AR setting you would like to have for optimal performance.

Maybe same for Line Clear, and Softdrop too..
but this might me something you just want it to be zero..

However, DAR/AR is different as in..
faster is not always the best.

So I'd like to hear out more about that before I make some more things.

2) Anything else would you like to tune?

3) Any cool single player modes you'll like to see?

4) Any cool functional items that you'll like to see in the game?

5)
Cool retro mino styles?
I've revived Tetris Grandmaster Style minos in Tetris Battle with the original colors (red I piece)

6) Anything else for a wish list?

7) I'm also working on a new balance between T-Spin, Combo, and Tetris styles..
Any thoughts shared will greatly help.

(I'm considering bringing the combo no flush rule that I've designed for the TOJ version)

Here's a practical demonstration of one part of Super Rotation System that really bugs me.

Problem with S/Z rotation

Under certain circumstances, the S or Z piece will not rotate when intuition suggest it should.

When a S or Z is sitting as it is in my demonstration video, you can't rotate the S counterclockwise, or a Z clockwise. you have to rotate it the other direction.  My example shows a case where the first instinct would be to rotate counterclockwise, to attempt to climb it over to the left, and one way the intended task can be accomplished.

I propose adding a feature to attempt to rotate S or Z the opposite direction, if the original attempt fails completely. In my opinion, inevitably, if basic rotation fails for an S or z, the person really wanted to rotate it the other way, if rotation the other way is possible, due to the rotational symmetry of these pieces.  What do you say, Tetris developers?   this is not appropriate for any other piece that I can think of.

This is quite interesting.

Super Rotation is TTC guideline, so it's nothing I can change, but when I used to work for Hangame.
We used a totally different rotation system.
I actually miss that system so much sometimes.. I've thought about making a special piece that rotates it that way. However, users won't be able to do T-spins with that one.

I'll look into this, although there is very little leverage in our side to change any of this, and we're only a licensee.

so I just played Tetris Battle for the first time, having had no prior experience of it (i actually had no idea it existed, and assumed it was part of the facebook Tetris Friends). having played a few games, here is my feedback:

• when you go on for the first time, there seems to be no way to cancel the "click here to play now" button and change mode or settings. there should really be a way to do this
• corollary to the above, there seems to be no way to change the keyboard settings without pausing mid-game, which due to the nature of pausing now, forces you to set all your key bindings in 30 seconds - which isn't really difficult, it's just a little strange seeing a time limit on that kind of thing
• the case for not limiting upgrades in sensitivity/softdrop speed/etc has been made before in this thread, i would just like to add emphasis to it here. I respect the need to find money from somewhere, and the RPG-like "achievement" nature of it, but it is frustrating for a skilled player to be artificially handicapped like this - imagine if chess matches gave beginners less pawns than grandmasters at the start of games
• I had no idea Tetris Battle and the facebook Tetris Friends were different apps - not to mention that the Tetris Friends facebook app and tetrisfriends.com seem to be completely different, despite tetrisfriends.com having a facebook connect button. It'd be nice to have these all integrated somehow, but I understand this probably won't happen soon if ever for political reasons

having said all that, thank you for taking the time to come here and discuss. it's refreshing to hear from a TTC employee like this without getting a load of marketing spin and corporate speak, and to actually have someone explain the issues honestly.

Thank you too for the honest feedback!
Any feedback is always helpful to us!
Yes.. there are some politics like anywhere.. that makes certain things harder..

However, I am considering moving some single player modes to FB Tetris Battle,
since you can't take advantage of the upgrades in FB Tetris Friends.

Let me know if there's any interesting single player modes you'll like to see in FB.

I like the uppdates on TF battle, I dont know how good the new customization will help when maxed but it is a good step on the way!, I do hope line clear delay could be brought down to a minimum. (0 or 1 frame or something). But maybe that would cause some problems too, iduno.

Also like the extended range of ranks. From 26 or something to 50.

However I have a few questions on things that seem odd (buggs?)

1. Is is made so that you cannot  skip ranks anymore by being much faster than the opponents fast?
2. Is it just becouse the 26-50 ranks are new that there is really only small differences between 26-40. (4p)
3. The Ai that is often implented at rank 50 (4p) is pumping out times of 18 sec atm, intentional?
4. I meet quite a few anonymous at the high ranks too, are they real people?

I guess some some of these questions could be answered by that TF battle update just came out which makes sense.

Are u planing to implent more tuning? will there be a way of testing the tuning before bying as in TF so one can know what to spend the money on?

Love the ideas you have and thanks for talking to us!

Edit: (bug) Also I sometimes meet anonymous and all are around the 1.20 min time at rank 50 (normal games are under 1 min there) (4p)

To answer some of the questions..

1) You should still can (unless there is a bug) there's a limit to that (something like up to Rank 15)
this is because of the fact that the special promotion system is so easy to abuse.
Higher ranks, we're trying to make it so that only really good people can get there to make the live matching more accurate to the users's skills.

2) Yes. We're still in the rebalancing.
It takes a while for the users to jump up there to where they should be, and we're going to need to wait until it's ready before readjust things.


3) AI is actually intended only as the last measure.. if you see a lot, it could actually be a bug.
Please let us know. Also AIs are harder to balance too, so we don't intent to use it so much.
But I'll look into this a little more. It could be a bug.

(By AI do you mean that it actually displays A.I?)

4) There is a permission that could have caused it not to give us the name.
But I'll have to look into it.
If it's anonymous, however, it should still be a game by a person (someone).


Are u planing to implent more tuning? will there be a way of testing the tuning before bying as in TF so one can know what to spend the money on?

=> yes there will be more levels and things coming.
But we'll like to hear more from the community before moving forward.

Yes, we too wish there was a way. but making the UI easy to understand is the issue,
so we're looking into that as well. Thank you for the feedback.

Yes, do tell! Did you have to move to Korea to work on Hangame? Wasn't there a Hangame Tetris game from before? Did the new one draw a lot of its gameplay from the old one?

I'll have to answer the rest of the questions later. I'm Korean born actually, and I've been raised traveling all around the world from ( north america, south america, europe, and asia).. so I originally worked for NHN/Hangame in Korea, and then had to move to Japan, and now I'm here living and working in Hawaii.

It was really tough for me in a personal end, moving all over and having to change my lifestyle so much. But I did it really because I loved the game so much, and wanted to spread what we've made to everyone and not being limited to Korea and Japan.

TTC questions are a little tricky, as I'm not allowed disclose anything. But yes BPS is also working on a Tetris Product right now, so there's more to come. But since there are several different teams working on different projects, some projects might be similar yet very different.

Oh, and to clear things for everybody.
Yes, full real-time multiplayer might come this year in facebook tetris battle.

But to make that happen we still have two more hurdles...

a) need more mass to make it an enjoyable experience.
b) we'll need to make the monetization of our service better since it costs a lot more to develop and maintain
a live service.
(flash doesn't allow p2p thus all traffic needs to go through a server-client model which is more costly to service)
We're close and getting there but we're still lacking a little bit that we need improve before we can move on.

It was easier for Hangame to do that, because Hangame was not aiming to profit from Tetris. And they already had a steady cash flow.. but if you're business relies on the fact that Tetris itself has to be profitable then it's a different story.

Lastly,
it is possible to play multiple games with that players in asynchronous gaming ( non live games ).
Actually if you check out FB Tetris Battle now, you'll notice that each game is different.
And they are all that person's game.
There are no acceleration or any manipulation on the user's game play.

Also, it's different from AI, because all strategies are organic.

An AI only works the way the programmer has intend it to.
I've build AIs for Tetris in TOJ together with talented programmers but it never really felt as real as asynchronous gaming. They don't make mistakes, there is no hesitation.. you will not see people doing b2b tetris in a row, or doing Combos and T-spins together.
However, in FB Tetris Battle, that gameplay is all there.

The big thing lacking I think is the lack of sense of timing,
but I've recently been thinking of ways to reduce that so there might be room for it to become more close to live play in the future.

Sorry, but really gotta get back to getting somethings done..
so I'll post again later today or this week.

However, I'll keep reading things as much as I can.
Thanks for the honest feedbacks.

hello acemagic, both toj and hangame tetris are very cool games, but tetris battle is just piece of s**t. sorry if that sound too bitter, but idea behind replay based battle mode is broken on so many levels...

No worries. Thanks for the honest feedback. In a strict sense of gameplay, I too agree you are right that real-time game play is the most exciting thing ever.

However, when I started working in Japan and Hawaii.. I realized a lot of things.
Not everybody likes it. and Not everybody has what it takes to enjoy it fully.

Some people don't like the fact that they're beating somebody (ex. In Japan, a lot of people wanted to avoid direct confrontation as it breaks the spirit of wa = or harmony )
Also, in countries like Korea, broadband is pretty common, but there are so many other places in the world without that infrastructure.
Without a decent ping, it's very hard to enjoy real-time multiplayer Tetris.

Lastly, there is also a critical mass factor too..
If there aren't enough players.. you probably won't be able to find an opponent at your level of skill.. and the waiting could be forever. (ex. Tetris DS, Tetris Splash at launch was great but 1 year later it would be hard to find players at your level)

I've designed realtime Tetris multiplayers about 4~5 times already,
so I decided to do something different this time.

A Tetris that will last forver, so that anyone from anywhere in the world can play each other anytime.
A Tetris that you don't have to worry about not having enough players which all online games are plagued with.

And that's how the Tetris Battle project started.

I know it's not for everybody, but it's something new we're trying to cover people and areas we haven't been able to cover with those other products.

You can think of it as a scooter vs a full scale motorcycle.
Or a canon ixy vs a full scale dlsr. Battle is more focus on convenience.

But recently, if you go and check today..
The facebook version actually has some features I've added to bridge the parts it was lacking.
Now it has the hybrid ability to play random players live at the same time.

So I guess it's now more like a compact camera with interchangeable lens in some ways..

It's a new path we're digging right now to try to complete the dream
of having one game that can connect everybody in the world with.

I know this might just sound a bit crazy or something..
but my passion has been always to strive something new to the world..
Multiplayer Tetris is such a great game.. wouldn't you want everyone to be able to experience some of it?

We might be still doing baby steps.. but someday maybe it could lead to changing how people play games.

An ability to be able to play multiplayer Tetris anywhere, anytime, with anyone..
Even if that person is gone ( imagine if we had a game of Michael Jackson) or busy..
the ability to play that person even if you're not online. (on planes or in the subway.. or somewhere in the world without internet connection)

Wouldn't that be awesome?

I guess everyone has their own dream.
But this is something a little silly.. I've been dreaming..

And that's what we're trying to do with FB Tetris Battle.

You see, I didn't even know Tetris Battle had any implementation of IRS/IHS because I assumed it was closer to the FB TF build. :< I checked it and it has the incorrect TF.Com-style Initial Systems.

During the spawn frame (i.e. a delay such as the line clear animation has just finished and we're about to spawn the next piece), check if the appropriate inputs are down. That is, if the Hold key is depressed when we go to spawn the next piece, swap first instead. Similarly, -- after evaluating IHS -- the soon-to-be-active piece should be rotated if a rotation key is actively depressed during that frame. Whether or not the input came before the line clear animation started or not should be irrelevant. After processing IHS and IRS, any player death conditions can be evaluated.

If both rotations are held, they should cancel each other out as usual (-1 + 1 = net rotation of zero in the spawn frame). There should not be any priority as there is now -- it seems to grab onto the last rotation checked and use that when IRS is applied.

http://harddrop.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3186 is an example of an optimization for 2-wide combo gaps using a traditional implementation of IRS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vX5BA1_EMqg#t=7m32s demonstrates a player whose fast 20G strategy incorporates nearly constant use of IRS by holding a single rotation key over long stretches of pieces. Although he opts to counter-rotate a few pieces back to spawn orientation after they enter, some players will cancel rotations during delays by holding two keys rather than release them all.

The good part is that TF.Com's implementation only applies IRS/IHS if there is a relevant delay (i.e. line clear animation). This much should stay the same.
Why'd they give up on Java? As long as you stick with Java 5 for compatibility, I'd think that would work just fine. From what I've seen, it's also much less finicky about polling for input and maintaining a decent frame rate from the start.

EDIT: Here's another thought: are replays using the same seed for the bomb generation as when the game was recorded? There is still potential for "strategy desync" if the replay opponent has not received enough garbage for a combo they performed to actually happen, but it's slightly less dependent on luck than if the bombs are not distributed in the same fashion.

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the update. This is exactly what I need. I'll look into it and see what I can do.
FB TetrisFriends initially had IRS/IHS but it has been requested to be removed.. however, we argued back that it should be in and that's why it's back in now. (However, we currently don't have the resources to maintain Facebook TetrisFriends app so that's why we couldn't upgrade it yet)

The Java part was dropped because it was received very poorly by the mass audience.
Actually the numbers dropped really a lot after the launch of the java version.

http://www.developeranalytics.com/app.php?id=2376198867

You can check out the graph here..
but around feb, 2008 was the original blockstar flash version.
if you look at april, 2008 you will see a big drop. That's when the java version was released.
Around early july, 2008 is when the new flash version was released.

The big reason is the difference in accessibility.
Java Virtual machine takes about 30 seconds to load, and requires install ( if you don't have it )
and also takes up more memory ( bad for low end computers ) and requires a security dialog check.
So even though the quality is higher ( better frame rates, and controls ) it just doesn't seem to work for mass audiences.

You can see a similar trend with facebook games released w/unity3d in facebook.
Even UNITY is even an easier tool to install, most games released under it failed greatly
because the penetration is low.

ex) Here's asteroids online launched by atari recently.
You can see that the marketing really failed big, and now they've dropped the game all together.
http://www.developeranalytics.com/app.php?id=165754536796000

With casual gaming, sometimes having just one more step will drop the conversion ratio more than 50%.
That means the acquisition cost for new users is double..
So that's why most of the people are developing in flash nowadays because it has the best penetration (95%+).

I do understand your point however, because I too am sometimes frustrated with the lag issues with flash.
In flash it's harder to keep a constant frame rate because of the way flash handles things.. and even if the frame is consistent they still have the problem of the keys being eaten up.
However, we've devoted a lot of time and efforts to try to make it as good as possible so far, as we too enjoy playing Tetris.

Your last quote about the bombs are quite interesting.
Yes, we do try to resynchronize the bomb positions so that even a replay will do combos.
However you are correct that because the garbage part is dynamic it's not always the same.
But in actual situations where you're matched with a player at a same level your APM (Attack per minute) should be similar so net result should be close. We've been testing and trying to improve this to make it as close as possible. I'll like to hear more about this possible, since it's a system that could be improved even more. Thanks for mentioning it.

Btw, I do love discussing and sharing thoughts..
but sometimes I get really over worked and maybe not be able to reply right away.
But even so, I'll try my best to check it out the weekend, so please pardon me if that happens.
The reason why I don't write so much is maybe because I don't want to disappoint you guys on that..

However, if you want to learn more about why things were designed this way, or other things we tried and what happened, I'm probably the best person to ask.
I can even share some behind stories from the days back when I was working in Hangame..
those were exciting times.

Would it be that hard to allow players to set the timings by frame/seconds (including instant DAS) instead of presets?

I don't think it's a technical challege, but might be a service issue.
more like.. do you want everybody to use any bats or golf clubs in baseball or golf.

There has to be some guidelines, so that people can say that it's because of the skill and not because of the club.
Also transitioning from the standard set that most devices offer to a new setting requires adjustment too so it's more of a policy issue in a way.

Tuning was made in TOJ's version, so that for the first time the users can change these values to their preference.. previous for an odd reason, no other official Tetris game actually allowed this.

I like to the fact that you can earn it. because it makes it feel more like a traditional game.
You play, earn things, and can upgrade... like an rpg.
And you get stronger as you play, and you can get adjusted to each settings appreciating it too.

Sometimes, if you buy the best car, or get the best gun from the start, it kind of spoils the fun of earning it in the games. (ex. if you start using trainers it'll be fun for a day or too, but you'll quickly lose interest in the game)

Just a thought: have you considered doing something along the lines of how Tekken works? My understanding is that the current Tekken games tune an AI based on how often you behave a certain way or react to various situations. Some of these AIs are drawn from the pool in addition to the pre-defined ones during single player games. It's actually not too far off from the replay-based solution you're using right now, although figuring out how to cleverly approximate stacking style and strategy in a generalized form would be tricky. The upshot is -- if you figured out how to make it work just right -- you could have real garbage holes rather than compromise with bombs and the like.

I'm actually really curious about this now, haha. It'll never be 100% identical, but an AI player of this kind could possibly have the intuition to know when to do things like downstack. It would also be pretty great if it could identify openers by rough stack shape and use them with the appropriate frequency to mimic that aspect of a player's behavior.

(I think we need to start having more AI discussion on the forums... Ryan Heise, Poochy, Mihys (haha wishful thinking), let's get the ball rolling!)
I suppose that's alright in friendlies. In StarCraft tournament play, pausing is punished by disqualification. This is pretty easy to enforce though, so it's not really a big deal if one can't disable it on the software side.
Hey, best of luck to you, but I'm not really a fan of trying to "fool" users with the asynchronous multiplayer. Falling back on Tekken again as an example, I feel it should be pretty clear whether you're playing against non-Live players not  -- i.e. you have opted to play on a machine in the arcade without another player in the case of Tekken, though the Tetris Battle solution doesn't necessarily have to be a separate "mode" as long as it is clearly indicated when you cannot be matched with a live player. Even newcomers are able to identify that the experience is not "exactly the same," so I don't think anyone really appreciates both experiences being tossed in the same bucket without any differentiation

I'll also second Blink's suggestion. I'd also like Initial Rotation and Initial Hold Systems implemented correctly; I believe they worked correctly in Java Tetris Friends, -- no way to check now -- but they didn't get things right when they brought them back on TetrisFriends.Com -- IRS/IHS should trigger on the spawn frame after a delay if the key is held, but TF.Com's implementation requires a unique input every during every line clear animation to get the desired Initial System to trigger.

I'd also like to voice my concern regarding the odd splintering going on. We currently have three games on the same base engine (two of which bear the same name despite varying feature sets), between which scores and settings cannot be shared. FB TF and TF.Com already have this issue with splintered identity, but it could easily become worse if FB TF or Tetris Battle start picking up features such as customizable speed settings without allowing purchases on the co-existing platforms to carry over.

And, of course, if you guys are really stuck with Flash at this point, please do not neglect continued optimization.

Sorry gotta get home to have dinner (already getting close to 9pm)
so I can't answer everything right now.. but IRS/IHS we've tried to make it right on Facebook Tetris Battle, if there's something you don't is right let us know, and we can put some efforts tweaking it.

While we're on the topic, are there/were there any plans for a Mac-compatible version of TOJ?

I don't work at TOJ anymore, so my answer is that I'm not aware..
but it's probably because it's very hard to update two versions at the same time in online.
It requires a bigger team and is high maintenance.

That's why we started building Tetris in Flash as now Mac users can also enjoy multiplayer Tetris.

Yes, definitely interested in hearing what your ideas are about game balance.  

acemagic, you were a developer on Tetris Online Japan?  Maybe you can shed some light for the rest of us on what exactly happened and why that game is no longer being worked on.  It was a very promising client, with great gameplay and a talented community but it looks like the developers abandoned the project.  What happened?  Also, do you know any future game plans for TOJ Inc.?

Yes, actually I've designed Tetris in Hangame, Korea. Tetris Online Japan.. and also here for Tetris Online.
One reason why it's not being updated so much might be because I'm here now working on these projects now. Also TOJ had some restructuring as well. Also I believe their focus might have changed from download client to more flash based products as a download client based on activeX launcher would only work on PC/IE environment.