4-Wide Guide

[Blink]

I don't feel like 4wide is broken, what IS broken is that players don't die until their spawned piece touches something.  That's the reason why the 4wide middle is so much more powerful than just a regular 4wide. Players just stack on the sides and don't even have to start their combo until they're near death.  I think they need to make it so that if garbage reaches a certain height above your playfield you're dead even if it doesn't touch a spawned piece.

[SecretSalamander]

They don't have to start their combo, but they can't stack either, if you've built 11 rows high and I've already sent 9 lines to you, unless you can clear the garbage, you aren't gonna be stacking any higher, and if you try, you die.

[Trance]

I don't feel like 4wide is broken, what IS broken is that players don't die until their spawned piece touches something.  That's the reason why the 4wide middle is so much more powerful than just a regular 4wide. Players just stack on the sides and don't even have to start their combo until they're near death.  I think they need to make it so that if garbage reaches a certain height above your playfield you're dead even if it doesn't touch a spawned piece.

Yep. I'm strictly talking about mid-gap 4 wide combo starts.

[chopin]

shrugs

[chowmain24]

if your stratagie is 4 wide and you win you are good enough of better than them. is just like tetris ing

[ZeroT]

if your stratagie is 4 wide and you win you are good enough of better than them. is just like tetris ing

Uh....wow

[chopin]

LOL. Grammar, Spelling, and Punctuation Policeee, we ooo we ooo we ooo.

[zaphod77]

I propose the following heuristic to nerf center gap 4-wide. (and center gap in general, though it affects 4 wide most)

Count total blocks in and above the playfield.

if there are ever more than

183 blocks in and above you field after line clear at any time, you lose, even if you didn't lock out.

I figure this as a full field of standard garbage is 180 blocks.

we add four above the field to that, that should be a lock out.

This is the most generous one I can think of.
Lets say you've got a full stack on each side. that's 120. 9 lines of garbage at that point will top you out.

If this is to hard to program, then work it this way.

If the ninth row above the top gets a block in it, you lose, even if the center is clear.

[Pineapple]

...or just bring combos down to a reasonable power level?

[zaphod77]

It would take a huge nerf in combos to keep center gap 4 wide from becoming too powerful. I'm not even sure capping it at 2 extra lines per clear would be enough.

[Dagorath]

.

[zaphod77]

BS idea. Would make them completely useless.

That's why I said, that it's better to nerf center gap so that you'd lose sooner.

There are two reasons to play center gap.

One is because it's faster to attack after you've set up the stack.

the other one is that you can let the side of the field rise above the top without getting knocked out.

The disadvantage is that it's harder to make 2 clean stacks than one.

4 wide center combo start heavily abuses the second reason to play it.

Even with my proposed nerf, you could still let the sides tower up for a bit, but if you let it get too high, it would top you out.

[chopin]

With new TF garbage system, it seems like it favors the 4-wide even more and strengthens it. Eventually they'll make it so strong that once the system registers that you're doing a 4-wide, you auto-win.

[XaeL]

It would take a huge nerf in combos to keep center gap 4 wide from becoming too powerful. I'm not even sure capping it at 2 extra lines per clear would be enough.

actually if each combo sends 2.5 (isntead of the current 1-5) then it would be the equivalent power of tspins. Hence if u did a fast 10 combo you would be sending at the same effiency as 5 tspin doubles. (+- backtoback, u get the point)

[chopin]

The fact is that I think they made that high of combos so strong because they never imagined a combo past the 2 wide.