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Hi Steelix100,

Welcome to Harddrop. I feel like ppt was made for casual gamers to have fun and that ppt succeeded at being very fun for the general masses. I also think we all generally agree that Puyo vs Tetris is not fair and I don't think it is something that can be easily balanced. However, I believe that the game of Puyo can evolve with hard drops and no piece delays and that the future of ppt can become very interesting once that happens (maybe ppt2).

I am not very good at Puyo and I cannot speak much to the game, but your insight on depth in Puyo (ie. watching other people's screens, planning your moves) is very much like depth in the early days of Tetris when we were all slow and did the same things. Not only that, I believe high level players still do all of these things when they play (I certainly pay attention to my opponents' fields).

I didn't read all of the words you wrote as there were too many and I only have so much room in my head to comprehend them all, but from what I gathered is that your view of Tetris isn't a very good representation of the game. More specifically, openings are only openings and good players will be good.

There's a lot of focus on openings in your discussions and I do not think it is fair to judge Tetris based on openings. You can spend all your time working on an opening, but openings in Tetris are simply vehicles to progress to the middle game. Against the average Tetris player, you will find that making no opening is equivalent to any generic standard opening (I will discuss 4wide later). You do not need to study all the openings in depth and I hope that Tetris isn't an exercise in rote memorization for you. It is perfectly fine to choose one standard opening that you think is the best or that you are most comfortable playing.

I did not see a lot of discussion on hard and soft skills and I want to implore you to work on your base Tetris skills (ie. downstack, stacking, tspin setups, kicks, efficiency, finesse, speed, etc.). Not only will you simply be better at Tetris, but I believe that you will find a little more depth in the game.

In terms of 4wide, I believe that the pc opening is a fair enough answer. I would be surprised at a 4wider trying to overtake a pc opening. If you cannot open with a pc, then you will need to improvise and I believe that is what Tetris is about. While 4wide is unbalanced, many of us find ways around it. Enough early pressure such as a fast stsd with followup can give you enough leeway to push off a 4wide.

If your opponent is overwhelmingly faster than you, there's probably nothing you can do about it. However, in that situation, you are not losing because your opponent is using a 4wide, you're losing because you're not fast enough. At that point, your opponent can use any opening and you are still likely to lose. In these situations, I would work on opening with enough speed and applying enough pressure to move into the mid game where you can maybe win the game (and remember to keep up the speed).

Yes, there's a lot of situations that will make you upset such as the rubberbanding and disatisfaction with combos. I've been there when someone busts out a huge combo a line away from topping out. I find that a lot of players struggle with these situations when they are not decisively better than their opponents. The games will have a lot of back and forth and you can and will get unlucky, a lot. Those situations present great opportunities for improvement. Play the next game a little faster, apply just a little more pressure, be a little more piece efficient, downstack better. And yes, it often doesn't seem worth it, but yet we all still play.

tl;dr - git gud.

http://harddrop.com/forums/index.php?showt...=6585&st=4#

I'm not sure why you are linking to your post here. Are you disagreeing with what we are saying or do you want feedback on your idea?

There's not really a permanent solution. But if you made the signup process a little more dynamic, most bots won't be able to figure it out.

1. Qualitative questions. Show a picture of a cat and ask "What animal is this?" and accept any answer that is cat-like (cat, kitten, lion, tiger). Other questions can be "What direction is this arrow pointing?" or "What do you drink water out of?". Rotate these questions.

2. Have a multi-page sign up process. The register page says steps 1-4, but if the account is made after step 1, then it is too easy to make an account. If the registration is separated out, it makes writing a bot less worthwhile. For example, if the first page is account details and the second page is captcha/verification, then someone would need to be devoted to writing a bot specifically for that process.

3. Make a javascript timer that delays the registration request (hit the server with a session token once, and then the registration payload). Most bots will not obey timers. Timer doesn't have to be too long, 1-2 seconds. If a registration comes in too fast, then you kick it out.

4. Do not use a static registration url (ie. /public/register). Also, do not reveal the url to the user. A form/post is too easy to code to. Have AJAX pull down a dynamic registration url when a user clicks "Join Hard Drop". Things like this break most of the bots out there and confuses most script kiddies (it helps if you obfuscate the javascript as well).

Keep in mind that if someone is truly dedicated, he/she will write a bot for your registration process.

I wouldn't worry about it because most people can't see better than 60fps anyway. Input lag, however, is your worst enemy.

code review? QA'ed/testing? have u seen the last 10-20 updates to tetris battle? "Dear tetris battlers we have a new update, hope it helps the let us know" followed by the SAME bug reports.

Which is fine. A lot of bugs don't get fixed because it's not feasible or economical to do so. The only thing you can really do is tackle the important problems.

Except this is more like unbolting the windows so that they open (e.g. instant das). Sure there are SOME changes that i listed that will obviosuly require a serious rework, but the simpler features require very little effort to implement.

All of your listed changes would require some degree of serious work and consideration. The "why" discussion would get too technical, nor would it be interesting and it's not really on topic with the thread either. Making software is not easy. If you think otherwise, I have a bridge to sell you.

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Keep in mind that all TGM rulesets are completely inaccessible to the average/casual player. Marathon with it's silly scoring system on the other hand, is far more accessible even though a lot of people will never make it to level 15. The heart of the marathon scoring system is more or less to track how far a player progresses through the game. Gaming the scoring system to get a higher score is nice, but most players will have enough trouble staying alive as-is.

The bag system is used to reduce the punishments a random piece generator can dish out and many people will never have to deal with repeating z's and s's, or too many squares coming out all at once or never seeing a line piece. This seems to be a bonus since it is hard to deal with such piece progressions (and somewhat unfair).

6 piece preview is good and it's extremely helpful for a lot of players. Seeing the pieces coming up relieves the mystery and stress of playing blind and not knowing what is coming in the future. It might be false hope because some players will play poorly to reach that line piece at the end, but at least players can play the game with certainty and without doubt.

Most players don't care about spawn orientation or position, nor can they play below das 7. A good ruleset would ensure that players are playing against themselves, not the game.

Really? Okay let's look at some figures and see if we can't get a conservative ballpark estimate of how much Tetris is raking in.

Let's run with your ball and assume TTC charges their licensees 5% of their revenue. EA currently pays for the mobile rights.
The first quote was from 2010. EA's Tetris hit the app store in July of 2008. Let's assume sales dropped by 25% since then per your reasoning. Let's also weight the lower price bound by 3/4ths the upper bound to be conservative.

Code Select Expand


// Find total revenue, with weighted price.
(100000000*(.75*1.99+.25*4.99)) = 274000000

// Find average annual revenue for that period.
274000000/(560 days / 365) = 178589285.71

// Assume they're currently making 25% less.
178589285.71-(.25*178589285.71) = 133941964.28

// Pay 30% to the app store.
133941964.28-(.3*133941964.28) = 93759375.00

// TTC gets their 5%.
93759375*.05 = 4687968.75

Conservative estimated annual revenue from EA mobile Tetris to TTC  (app store costs already deducted): $4,687,968.75


There's 1 billion smartphones in the world and 100 million sales. Not everyone plays Tetris and of those who do, fewer would pay for it. Not only that, but the game might be region limited and it probably doesn't work on all smartphones. 10% of all smartphones is pretty good, and it's possible that most of everyone who can and would buy the game have already bought the game. I'm not saying that there's no profit, simply that it's probably not a lot. If the market is close to saturation, then revenue might drop sharply in the coming years. It's probably enough capital to back another game, but you can't exactly release a new version of Tetris every year and expect a high ROI.

DAU = Daily Active Users. Tetris Battle currently serves around 1630461 DAU, and Tetris Friends currently serves around 9700 DAU. Let's again weight the lower bound earnings by 3/4ths to the upper bound for both sites. TTC sub-licenses the brand to Tetris Online (the developer of both sites), but in reality it's just a sister company (that operates out of the same office of BPS--the licensing sub-company of TTC) whose profits, more or less, go to the same people.

Code Select Expand


// Find daily revenue for both websites with weighted earnings.
(1630461+9700)*(.01*.75+.02*.25) = 20502.01

// Convert to annual revenue.
20502.01*365 = 7483233.65

Conservative estimated annual revenue from TF and TB: $7,483,233.65


With the (very) rough estimates for mobile license and TF/TB revenues combined, TTC is conservatively making around $12 million annually. This doesn't even account for the dozens of other games currently on the market that they license out. With that included, it would be no surprise to me if their annual profits (after taxes, labor, office lease, etc.) are well within the eight figure range.

Operational expenses (servers, licenses, bandwidth) are not cheap and running a company is expensive. High quality hosting and bandwidth can run $50k/month or more and let's not get started on how much an Oracle license will run you.

There's daily revenue, but it's probably not that high. At $5 CPM (cost per 1000 views) for 1.6M daily users, you might be looking at $240,000/month ($~2.9M a year), but let's not worry about such small numbers. If we were looking at a small company or an indie studio, $12 million a year is a blessing. But realistically $12 million a year in revenue is not very much in the big world of corporations. Pay your CEO and the few guys on payroll well, but it's not a lot to work with. Also, keeping a fully fledged dev team on staff is not economical, especially when there's no work to do.

No, they really aren't.

Here is a list of features that can be tweaked with minimal code changing:

• Instant DAS
• IHS
• IRS
• Coloured garbage
• Garbage/combo tables
• Max number of players

Here is a list of features that only requires a UI and minimal code changing:

• Stats display (num tspins, tpm etc)
• Better spectator support (just UI changes)

Here is a list of features that require significant overhaul:

• Adding a game lobby/chat functions

Here is a list of lag reducing features that do not require a moderate overhaul:

• Network independent gameplay (AKA shove networking in a thread, if you don't receive messages the players gui is unaffected)

Here is a list of lag reducing features that may require a significant overhaul:

• Fps independent gameplay (AKA model/view/controller framework)
• Improving networking performance (using UDP/TCP for relevant things, optimizing centralized/player based game servers, etc etc)

Obviously due to existing code/framework these are just estimates.

The majority of changes that players ask for can be fixed in the *quick fix* section....

I've read your list, and I'm not going to go through each detail. I'd like to point out that once built, software is usually set in stone and the architecture is committed. If the program wasn't designed for these features in the first place, then it probably means there would be significant effort to make the changes.

Also, even if it is simple, it wouldn't be very professional to have one guy spend just a few hours on a whim to get the changes in. You need the changes to be code reviewed, QA'ed/tested, and supported in production. Thus, taking 1 week of estimated work and making it realistically 4+ months. This also isn't going to happen when you have 0-2 devs on payroll.

We can always go back to the old adage of moving a house a few feet to the left because it's not perfectly centered on its lot. The house is already built, you can't just pick it up and move it.

There has definitely been a paradigm shift in Tetris from the 80s to now. Primarily, it's gone from "man vs. game" (MVG) to "man vs. man" (MVM). (I don't mean "man vs. man" exclusively in regards to multiplayer, by the way.)

I agree. The game has definitely changed over time. I'd also like to add on that what we think should be a good game isn't necessarily what makes a good game. It's hard to contend with 1.6M daily active users.

Tetris has sold over 100 million copies for cell phones alone. Most of the gameplay changes that we want are subtle--not requiring a six month overhaul. Money is not the issue here.

Once a game has been made, it's been made and no one will overhaul it. Getting a company to revisit a game is tough so the changes you want to see can only be realized through creating a new game. Depending on how TTC licenses out their IP, the publishers and individual studio may have their own creative control over the game. Any feedback that makes it to the new team may be ignored as it comes from <0.1% of potential customers.

100 million copies is also a useless statistic because we don't know how much revenue TTC sees of that. What if only 5% of each game sale goes to TTC? After taxes and operational costs, you'll make profit, but we're not looking at amazing numbers here. Also, it doesn't grab the timespan either. If you can make that many sales in a year, sure, it's great! If it's over a few years, probably not so great.

Game sales are also one time transactions. It's possible that they're seeing very little revenue now since everyone bought a copy already and there are few consumers left in the market. The prospects don't look great here.

Most of the changes could be implemented by a sole developer in under a week by tweaking code...

These changes are probably more complicated than just a week of tweaking code. Let's take the normal estimating logic. Double the number and increment the time unit. We're now looking at 2 months. Also, you can't just put a sole guy on the project. Let's say you need a team of maybe 4 people (manager, dev, qa). Chances are, the guys who made this game have moved on, so you have a fresh set of 4 people. That 2 months just turned into 4 months due to ramp up time. What are the base costs of this one project? Let's estimate that 4 guys cost maybe 200k/year so a baseline cost of such a project is $267k to work on a game that's probably already made its sales and profits. Studios are often strapped for cash and there are probably other projects that are more important.

Keep in mind that all my numbers are optimistic. When a game company decides to actively add features to a game after release, it's often because they own the IP and/or made a promise.

Building good software costs money and it doesn't come cheap. If you don't have money then your only viable option is to contract/license out your IP to a studio that actually has the resources and can afford to make a game on the side. Six to twelve months of development from a real studio is far more affordable and logical than hiring an entire dev team when you have no money.

Comparisons to the big studios doesn't help because they had millions up front for their projects. I also find it unlikely that Tetris's current revenue could support a full in-house dev team. Maybe if the game can generate more revenue, then more money can be poured into a better product.

Also, microtransactions is the current meta. You can't get angry at companies for jumping on the bandwagon. People love hats.

Since the thread has already been bumped though, I'd like to retract some stuff I said throw out OBS as now being the best program for streaming:
http://obsproject.com/

Currently about as good as XSplit, unless you really love complex animated overlay stuff, and with the features that are coming soon will almost certainly be better before too long (bandwidth scaling and optimised game support, and a ton of other stuff that muf has mentioned as he's involved with the dev team). Given that it's free, I'd say for anyone just looking to stream stuff at a relatively uncomplicated level it's almost certainly better than XSplit, ffsplit or FMLE. Also typically runs more efficiently and with less CPU usage.

I've been using OBS to stream recently. I like it because it is very clean and can run on subpar computers without problems.

UI is a little confusing at first, but pretty straightforward once you're used to it. I do wish that I had better built in audio control though, but it's still a step up from some of the other solutions.

Not really, the longest one is probably not much more than 1k words, so 15 minutes or so of typing, which was between GSL matches this morning when I wasn't doing much else anyway. And aside from that I've graduated and don't start work until the 6th August - I can spare the time.

Can also go with the argument that if HD had less wrong with it, I'd be writing shorter posts. Or that if I gave genuinely helpful suggestions as well, they'd be even longer...
I'll concede this is an extremely valid point, and on pretty much anything other than forum/blog posts I vastly prefer being concise over verbose and waffly, though it's less fun to write that way so I don't bother if I don't have to.

Though I'd also say if you picked out the points I actually raised and your replies discussed them, then this whole thread would be more valuable than when you just nitpick the manner in which I raised them.
True for a fair number of things, though I'd say with something like running a website it's highly subjective and open to guesswork what would really be "better". There are a huge plethora of options to what can be done to improve the site, change what it offers, change the dynamic, change the functionality - these are all entirely up to the community at large and the staff, and I'm not really in a position to make claims on what HD should be. I also don't have access to stuff like Analytics data or decent forum stats (because IPB is sh**e forum software or they're disabled to regular members, I'm guessing the former)
If by "help" you mean "put in actual effort" then you're probably right. But I don't really consider such posts as effort really. And as I mentioned above, at the moment, no, I don't really have much better to do. And you should probably try reading some longer books at your age.
Lol you say this as if it isn't established already  
Tomorrow I'll be watching the Olympic road race cycling for 2-3 hours. During that I'll make a magnum opus on how to improve HD and I'll try and be a bit more constructive and suggestful, mkay?

TIL what magnum opus means:

mag·num o·pus/ˈmagnəm ˈōpəs/
Noun:   
An important work of art, music, or literature, esp. the most important achievement of an artist or writer.

I'm looking forward to your "magnum opus". I hope it is beautiful.

In terms of this thread. Blink needs to figure out what he wants to do. He can't have everything. The direction he needs to take isn't one small change. Nor is it adding special features to this website. He needs to take a step back and look at the game as a whole. Unfortunately, the game is not a very interesting game to watch. And to throw more dead bodies on the pile, the game play is pretty one dimensional as well. Nevermind that the game is almost impossible to commentate because of how fast the game moves. I'm not saying that the game is dead because there are surely many directions to push the game. Blink or someone else needs to figure out where the game needs to be and then push the community in that direction.

For example:
Would it help if the game speed was capped at 120blocks per minute? Or would it help to go to 12 columns instead of 10 (slower games, better watching)? Perhaps the bag needs to be more random (move to a 7/8/9-bag system).

Perhaps the game rules could be changed. Maybe matches should be scored differently. Instead of an indefinite time span or a definite win/loss, the game could work in terms of bouts. Players face off in 1-2 minute bouts and are given a score based on how well they do (bpm, blocks, attacks, average stack height), etc. Obviously a top out is an instant loss. You can even carry over the a penalty/bonus to further bouts depending on how well/poorly each person was doing (start with trash lines, more differentiated piece generation, less t's/I's, etc.).

And people love teams. If there were only a better way to implement team matches. Maybe a mechanic where players can rotate in and out of live matches, like tag teaming.

Who knows what people want. What people should be asking Blink to do is envision how Tetris should be played and watched, and then push the community in that direction, whether they like it or not. And to be honest, most of the "hardcore" people here will probably hate the "right" direction to take the game.

---

Also, is there a way to disable these mass emails that Blink sends out?

After thinking about it some more. This mode already exists. It's called downstack.. just with more holes.

Given enough active players, ladders generally self balance. Whoever is at the top may not always be the best, but that's life.

Cheaters normally cannot gain more than 1-2 standard deviations above their skill level without being unnoticeable so I wouldn't be too worried about it (no one really cares if someone is a little higher than they should be as ELO is relative).

Violations/penalties should be last resort. A good ladder system should be preventative to player abuse in itself.

It's a cute idea, but it is not consistent in how 40L records really work.

Part of 40L is not just clearing 40L, but dropping the 100 pieces required to clear 40L (so don't think of just 40L in x seconds but also 100+ pieces dropped in x seconds as well). By automating a significant portion of this process (dropping many pieces ahead of time), the 40L record is shortened, but only by reducing the amount of pieces needed to be dropped, thus reducing the meaning of a "pure" 40L record.

Not to say that this is not a useful skill or measurement. Such setups can be probably built rather fast, and if built fast enough, it is viable for regular 40L play. If someone went ahead and dropped the initial pieces themselves (which can be done rather fast), I would consider that a pure 40L record.

I would say that it's fine to go ahead and label this as a 40L run, but give it a meaningful name to distinguish from pure 40L runs (ie. prestack/downstack 40L).

In terms of what nullpomino allows, that can always be changed.

I think change on attack adds depth, and I also think that line clear delay adds depth as well.

And if we're railing on game rulesets then I also think that combos are totally broken and I personally think they need to be massively neutered or removed altogether. I like the idea of chaining clears whilst drilling, but that offers benefits in itself without creating a way of sending huge amounts of garbage for very little skill or risk. T-spin triples send a ton, but at least they force you to destabilise your stack a bit.

A lot of people dislike combos, I'm not sure what's so bad about them. What would be interesting, is if there were different modes that players can switch between on the fly.

Regular Mode - boring
Absorption Mode - send 1/2 as many lines, but can cancel 1.5x as much garbage
Berserk Mode - send bonus lines, but also receive some to yourself

And let's not make it an extra button to switch between modes. Let's say that modes are activated a certain way. Perhaps a tspin mini from the left and from the right can switch between these modes and they only last a certain number of pieces (ie. 30 pieces) or that the modes slowly diminish over time. This would definitely add an extra element to the game, if not confuse the heck out of everyone playing.

Perhaps what may trigger berserk mode is if the player achieves a certain send:clear ratio within the last x blocks (like sending 12 lines for clearing 8 lines over 30 pieces) and Absorption Mode triggers if the player starts cancels a certain number of lines in a combo. This would balance the game in such a way that you can send lines to send a combo situation into absorption mode and players who go crazy end up penalizing themselves, but if the berserk garbage always lines up, they could dish out a harsh number of lines very easily.

I want to add something about some misconceptions that have been going around in this thread:

It's funny that the number of players logged into tnet2 have been brought up multiple times in this thread as if this was "proof" that there was a large "hardcore" audience at some point in time because I would not claim that there were 80 "hardcore" players online at any point in time. In fact, when tnet2 was thriving, most of the players were 30 ppm or less and played special blocks. It's also interesting to note that Blockles maintained a minimum of ~200-300 players playing at any point in time which could spike up to a few thousand during peak hours. Most of these players are also not "hardcore" players. TetrisFriends probably has anywhere between 200-400 active players, but less than 25% of them are Platinum (could be less now, I haven't logged on in months, but check the number of players playing in bronze, silver, and gold rooms throughout the day and there's just so many more people online).

Also, I must set a few things straight, I have many fond memories of tnet1 and tnet2, but none of them include Corrosive. Corrosive would come into my special block rooms, pretend like he's amazing, curse everyone out, make extremely vulgar racist comments targeted towards many ethnic groups, and told everyone they were noobs even when he was not winning. In my opinion, what really killed tnet2, are people like Corrosive. The rooms I played in were fun and we didn't keep track of scores or how fast anyone was playing and we played politics and formed peace treaties and ceasefires and I miss that. It was all fun and great!

However, when there weren't enough pure rooms around, Corrosive would go into rooms where people weren't very good and just destroy them and then he'd go on rants about the holocaust or something and tell people that they were noobs and that their life was wrong and to join his cult or else they would go to hell (tried to convert me quite a few times). People would leave the rooms and make new ones and Corrosive would follow them around and harass them until they logged off. I remember many times where I'd log in and Corrosive would be banned from like half the rooms open (geez, I wonder why). Tnet2 didn't die because it got old or it isn't fun, it died because it doesn't stop people from harassing others.

Don't get me wrong, there were many people who ruined the game for others (run out of rooms to play in so play with people who aren't on the same level). Corrosive is an extreme example, but he just did it so often and he did it very well.

In TetrisFriends, the grouping system makes it hard for players to do this and so no one can ruin the lower rank rooms. I'm sure there are plenty of people online all the time, just not rank 20. But really, why should people want to be rank 20. Rank 20 is where players trash talk and tout their elitism like it's their job. Rank 20 is where people are more interested in putting others down and being rude than actually playing the game. Rank 20 is where people play the game 8 hours a day 7 days a week to stay at the top of their game. Rank 20 is where the average player feels like this: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/12/31/ (I link this a lot, only because it's so true).

Who wants any of that? I don't go snowboarding to hear someone trash talk about how terrible of a snowboarder I am, I go snowboarding because it's fun and I want to do it. The same for going out to a bar. I don't go to a bar to tell random people that they're losing at life and that I'm better than them. I go out to have fun. I actually see this a lot in sports as well. You have the group of players who thrive on trying to be "the best" and taking everyone out. "I scored that goal", "I don't believe in teamwork", "I only slam the ball", "Anyone who doesn't copy me is a noob", "I don't pass the ball", "I peg the ball, I don't pass it". I ran a tennis group in college and the most annoying people that I asked to stop coming were the people who would show up, look at someone, turn to me and say "I'm better than him", "I could kick his a**", "That guy looks scrub". The joke is, they would look at ranked players and say this (and they weren't even good, but even if they were good, it gives them no right to ruin the fun for others). My default response is always "go home, no one wants that around here".

Everyone in this thread wants insane competition and all they care about is kicking another person's butt and now they're sad that no one else wants to be as "awesome" as they are. The real question is why would anyone want to join the group? It's not fun and no one likes getting their butt handed to them nor is the average person that interested in trash talk or even competition.

Overall, I can probably going into a lot of issues that isn't "random", "Blink vs Hebo_Mai", "not enough trash talk", "no one cares", "not enough commitment" but really, if you want more people to be around, don't make it such a pain to be here, because why would anyone want to come back? Like, for example "TF isn't Tetris" <- why should I talk to someone who's instantly going to parade around like they know Tetris better than me? Why are we arguing about whether or not TF is Tetris or saying that Nullpomino is better than TF and how to transition players over to "hardcore". "Nullpomino is great, TF is trash, why are you playing TF?".

TF is Tetris as long as I'm concerned. No one cares about the best, they only care about fun. Telling someone that they're stupid because they think that TF is real Tetris only makes people not want to talk to you. [sarcasm]And I wonder why no one wants to be pro like me![/sarcasm]