My Multiplayer Strategy Article

[Corrosive]

Blockbox Multiplayer 101
written by Corrosive.

If you take the time to really read through this and get something out of it then you will. I'm not gonna take anything said from 'spindizzy', this is all based on my own experience, 5+ full years on tnet2 and tfast. There is nothing arrogant about this article but the best way I can present this is to talk about myself a lot and focus on the areas I excel at which make me a stronger player and then contrast myself with people I play against.

Three reasons why people can't bury me:

1) Too Slow - My average TPM as of right now is 149. When I play seriously I range anywhere from 130 to mostly 140-170 and when showing off, 180+. On the field there are 10 spaces across rather than 12 across like on tnet, meaning it is easier to go faster on here (smaller space to stack on). When I go back to playing tnet I hate it because the 12 lines across is a significant difference. Since this is the case I am avoiding ever playing tnet again because it is no good to even practice on because it messes me up whenever I go back to playing BB. Advice: stick to just Blockbox. And for God's sake do not play Blockles or Cultris. That will fuck you up big time. I have managed to convert a dozen tnetters and blockles players to Blockbox with the help of some others and hope to find more of my scattered tnet2 brothers out there.

The presumption is you've settled into Blockbox by now and have spent a decent number of hours playing it, are enjoying it, and want to get better so that you can kick butt. First of all, you have a lot to be thankful for. In contrast to TetrisFriends and every other watered down Tetris Company game, on Blockbox there are no limitations keeping you from playing your best. The delay is custom, controls are custom, sensitivity is custom, preferences for adjusting sound are there, your field has visual grid lines embedded into it to help you aim, and the website is very stable (aside from when people get java errors). In other words you can go as fast as you potentially can. Most of all, the game has a developer who actually cares a great deal about us and our feedback, and has improved the game entirely over the past recent month. He chats with us on a day-to-day basis and even plays with us. He goes by 'Deniax'. I could talk about the nightmare of tnet2's non-existent creator and how he abandoned and screwed us over but I won't even speak his name.

side note: The best way to boost the performance of BB is to press CTRL+ ALT + DEL to open Task Manager -> Processes tab, find java.exe and set it's performance to high. Don't do the same to firefox.exe or whatever browser you are using though. Self-Explanitory.

Most people realize speed isn't everything but some people are simply just too damn slow. I've said a lot that stacking is speed. The theory I have now come to is that speed is accuracy. The more accurate you are, the longer you can just keep going and going without stopping until you miss, which you will have to account for by working around it and think about how you're gonna fix it, which wastes time. At the skill level I'm at right now, I often just flow right through a missdrop and can work around it easily without hesitation and still creating adds out of it. The best way to practice accurate stacking is playing 40 lines and multiplayer. The better you get at stacking accurately, the faster you will get at it because it becomes more second nature to you about where to put each piece. It is a gradual change depending on how much playing time you put in. I would give a noob three cardinal rules: 1) play everyday, 2) don't miss, and 3) don't stack over gaps.  There is nothing holding them back from being as fast or as good as they want to be. Only time.

Intelligence is more important than accuracy.
Accuracy is more important than speed.


2) Not Enough Pressure - My main determinant of whether the person I am playing is good or not is by how much pressure they put on me (how constantly they send me garbage/adds). This goes hand in hand with speed but is more important. If I notice the constant pressure from them, what this does is not only make it more difficult/challenging for me to beat them but it makes it a lot more fun as well. Example, I have a blast playing kevinb/kevinDDR. He is a good solid player in my book because he really pushes me when we 1v1 and manages to get me up top almost to death in about every other match or so. Other examples are Rosti_LFC, digital, Reveillark, and jujube. The other end of the spectrum would be me raping someone in a league match 15-0 meaning the other person just put no pressure on me at all. A lot of times on tnet2 strong players and their pressure would frustrate me and sometimes overwhelm me -- not so much now because I can downstack the garbage and know how to send their garbage back to them. In regards to pressure, the exact opposite of me beating someone 15-0 is when I 1v1 Blink. He is the best / most efficient player there probably ever will be in multiplayer tetris, averaging 190tpm like every game and with enormous pressure that overwhelms me so bad that I hesitate as much as three times more than I would normally. It throws me off my game because I am not used to playing against such power. Just like pro top-100 in the world athletes are beasts and can perform extremely hard and fast with no hesitation -- he is a powerhouse at sending lines and absorbing damage. He is immune to adds unless I manage to do a hell of a good job at sending his lines back to him which I am not close to doing on Blockbox yet. It is not because he is so fast that I struggle so much, but that he fully harnesses the speed he possesses and is much more efficient at adding and downstacking my garbage at the same time. Maserati has the fastest 40 lines record on Blockbox and is arguably faster than jono or blink, but I just beat him 10-3, whereas Blink beat me 36-1. Again, speed isn't everything. You could go 200tpm tetrising and missing like hell but could still lose to someone who is taking their time and playing smart. Again, intelligence is more important than accuracy and accuracy is more important than speed. Also, never give up when you are up at the very top. You can always recover and come back, which I have done countless times almost amazingly.

3) Wasteful clearing - This is a great concept that I want to harp on. It has a lot to do with block placement and efficiency. To start, what is the purpose of stacking when you aren't going to tetris or send any lines? The same concept applys to downstacking. A lot of players lose to me especially when we're uptop because they clear lines without barely sending me any lines back, in return making it easier for me to keep sending them adds. This is called optimizing your downstack. Blink told me once that "the best player can add and downstack at the same time." Don't clear a bunch of lines each at a time (sending me zero garbage) when you could be clearing the same amount of lines and sending 2 lines back to me or even 4. Worded differently, see either I could clear each line individually in rapid succession or I could clear the same amount of lines by tetrising or sending 2 lines of garbage to the opponent which is much more effective and smarter. Doing this means a lot of times you will need to wait for a specific piece in order to put it in its exact place and send a add that best levels out your playing field, which will come to you very soon anyway and is worth waiting for. This is my style of play.

Watch this recent video of me vs. Maserati and observe my style that I am talking about. You can see it real specifically toward the end of the very first round: Video

This whole concept about optimized clearing is the definition of great downstack/digging. Downstack in multiplayer is a lot different than in block driller because in multiplayer you have to actually send lines back to your opponent as you downstack rather than merely only clearing lines. Survivor mode is great for training when you have nobody to play with. It improves your downstacking, block placement, speed, and holding skills. The best way to utilize all of this advice is to play a lot of multiplayer and play against various players and their different styles of play. If you really want to get faster/better and you really love playing Multi-Tetris then you will. Eliminate all self-doubt and believe in yourself. Strive on becoming the best. It's a lot more fun when you are a stronger player. It won't take you long to get there. Now go kick some ass.

-C

P.S.  I think when people are over-conscious about their style during the game and what they are doing right and doing wrong and everything can only make them worse temporarily. Someone commented that trying to play differently at first makes you bad, but if you learn how to do it to the point of second nature you see the effects. This is true. Don't be too conscious and over-analyze your own playing while you play, just play. Looking at replays and watching others however is different. If anything, just beware of doing these two things: over-stacking (stacking too high) and stacking over holes/gaps. That is the biggest tip I can give you which I didn't even write about here. Don't stack over holes. Stack around them.

"Tetris is a game of creation and destruction. Impermanence is an inherent propensity."

[Reveillark]

hahah siiick i made your list ;p

good read.

[clincher]

good article its helping me out even though i suck

[Rosti_LFC]

Was going to write a similar thing on TC before it got shut down, and may still do so.

After playing people like awake, I think that TPM is definitely way overrated. If you're making good use of the pieces you're dropping then your speed isn't quite as important.
What is important is to be able to make no mistakes and to be able to drill extremely efficiently while still sending high levels of garbage. Work on those points first and foremost, and let the speed come itself.

[Corrosive]

Was going to write a similar thing on TC before it got shut down, and may still do so.

After playing people like awake, I think that TPM is definitely way overrated. If you're making good use of the pieces you're dropping then your speed isn't quite as important.
What is important is to be able to make no mistakes and to be able to drill extremely efficiently while still sending high levels of garbage. Work on those points first and foremost, and let the speed come itself.

Yep. What is your Blockbox Manual about?? You gonna upload that here?

[Rosti_LFC]

Yep. What is your Blockbox Manual about?? You gonna upload that here?

Blockbox manual is just a guide on how to use Blockbox, what all the modes are, what all the options do etc. Not sure so far, but may be on the actual Blockbox site itself. I'll need to talk to Deniax first.

My VS strategy article was/is something different.

[Pineapple]

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]I think that TPM is definitely way overrated. If you're making good use of the pieces you're dropping then your speed isn't quite as important.[/quote]
That said, HOLIC did wipe the floor with people through shear speed alone...

[Rosti_LFC]

That said, HOLIC did wipe the floor with people through shear speed alone...

Not really. He could clear through an entire field of garbage extremely quickly, but this was more due to effective drilling and skimming rather than speed. Yes, he didn't rely heavily on t-spins, but that was at a time when nobody else was using them either.
I'd say TGM-HOLiC's success was far more down to his technique than his speed, especially in a slow game like Tetris DS where it's hard to gain much of a speed advantage in the first place.

I think there are far more players out there like awake and to some extent Blink, who show that effective stacking can easily beat fast stacking.

[Corrosive]

I revised this a lot and even cut some stuff out, the parts I revised are marked in red, which I will change back to black in about a week or so.

[meow]

I could talk about the nightmare of tnet2's non-existent creator and how he abandoned and screwed us over but I won't even speak his name.

[jujube]

P.S.  I think when people are over-conscious about their style during the game and what they are doing right and doing wrong and everything can only make them worse temporarily. Someone commented that trying to play differently at first makes you bad, but if you learn how to do it to the point of second nature you see the effects. This is true. Don't be too conscious and over-analyze your own playing while you play, just play.

i think that's a good mentality to have. if you're confident that what you're trying to do will work, you're increasing your chances. it's when you stop and question your approach to a situation that you're in trouble. it's better to improve (downstacking for example) slowly over time than to obsess over each piece placement while you're playing, which makes it impossible to get into a good mental rhythm.

[SneakyDave]

interesting

should be a thread explaining some of the terminology for the noobs
things like downstacking, garbage, adding? :/

and i read in a another thread that i should make the line for tetrises in the middle, anywhere specific in the middle? o.o

[Digital]

interesting

should be a thread explaining some of the terminology for the noobs
things like downstacking, garbage, adding? :/

and i read in a another thread that i should make the line for tetrises in the middle, anywhere specific in the middle? o.o

Check out the stickied glossary thread for the terminology.

The empty column for tetrises in the middle (the ideal middle would be columns 5 and/or 6 depending on the vertical orientations of different rotation systems). The main advantage for having the column in the middle would be to have wiggle room to tetris when you're at the top. The disadvantage would be that certain rotation systems have initial spawn orientations that are biased to having the column on the right side. This means that you'll have to move pieces slightly more because you'll be placing on the far right. If you had the column on the far right instead, you would be placing pieces where they need to be (left and middle) just a tiny bit faster. Needless to say, having the column on the far left would be the worst choice.

However, in a real game, you have to adapt and follow the hole wherever it leads so all this is kind of moot.

[clincher]

I think it would be the best if you get used to stacking no matter where the hole is i have seen players like blink able to stack for a tetris no matter what