A message regarding 40 Lines

[Aaron]

Recently, we have seen an influx of members who only care about 40 Lines. They spend hours a day working on only their sprint time, asking for sprint-only advice, and throwing away other skills to only focus on those hundred or so pieces. It is not good for your health as a Tetris player, and many of the older members know that sprint time does not mean much when it comes to multiplayer. For example, then-world record holder MicroBlizz did not reach the playoffs in TTOII. He lost out to a four wide combo. One year later, after tossing Sprint to dedicate six months to intense multiplayer with top opponents, he beat Blink en route to fifth place in TTOIII.

A healthy diet of all modes leads to success and speed will come with it.

Sprint is not the be-all, end-all to Tetris. It is only used as a tournament seeding method because it is the easiest available metric (of any sort) to order players. Only caring about a Sprint time is similar to a quarterback who only works on his 40-yard dash, and not other skills related to his position. Sure, a faster quarterback can escape certain situations with his speed, but doesn't have the refined skills to succeed in other areas. A Tetris player can fix or get out of certain situations with their speed, but it doesn't mean that they are a good player in other areas. Also, in football, speed in 40-yard dash does not translate directly to competition. In Tetris, speed while doing ten Tetrises does not translate directly to multiplayer and its strategies.

Mess around in Dig Challenge. Play some Dig Race. Don't be afraid to lose 15-1 to a random player. Don't spend all of your time on one part of the game.

tl;dr SPRINT DOES NOT REALLY MATTER

Also for the love of god if you insist on being a one-dimensional, speed only player do it on a real game instead of Tetris Friends.

[tk198]

Can not take you seriously with the Cliff Paul avatar.

[Aaron]

Can not take you seriously with the Cliff Paul avatar.

I'm just trying to assist around here.

[ohitsstef]

I wholeheartedly agree to this.

40 lines is only 1 aspect of the game and like I've been telling some users, if you spend more time playing FFA you will become faster. It goes hand in hand. Stop focusing on one aspect of the game and expecting to improve on everything else.

[Agamemnon]

Give up.
I've been saying this for over a decade.
People will never understand that aptitude and skill beats that one flashy showy bit.

[caffeine]

It's an easily accessible mode with a clear goal. It's perfect for hooking newcomers since it has such a strong feedback loop: "got a faster time--I'm improving!"  Once they're hooked, hopefully they'll move on to more in-depth modes, but not all will.

I get what you're saying, and I respect appreciation for Tetris in all its forms. But at the same time, don't knock another man's Tetris.

[nostalgianinja]

I'm quite new, and I'm actually trying to make a balance between battles (Tetris on 3DS online battles seem to give me a good kick) but I never really rely on just one game mode to play.  I only do sprint for about 30 minutes a day, then move onto Marathon+ on Nullpomino, and then do dig races (10 or 18 lines, depends on how much of a challenge I want.) before doing battles.

Personally, I feel that Sprinting isn't for me, although I DO want to improve my speed.  Cultris 2 seems to be rather interesting on trying not to rely on many pieces at once for me.  and I like that challenge.

Guessing there's disadvantages to doing sprints constantly?

[VladtheImpala]

So I started on Nullpo, so I might have a different experience than the average tf noob, but I agree with caffeine. I think that line race is a good tool to help players build up an initial level of skill, and the feedback loop is helpful for getting to the point were you can begin to compete with other players/understand why the other modes might be useful. I remember back when i started I was just way too slow to even compete with other people on null, but line race offered a tangible way to gauge my improvement. After I got faster, even though I was still worse, I began to understand what other elements I could add to my gameplay. I think if I had started just doing tspins at like 0.5 pps, I would've gotten frustrated pretty quickly and just stopped playing.

So yes, I think that people should keep saying "sprint isn't the most important thing". But I think that sprint holds an important role of hooking people on the game in the first place.

Additionally, to say that sprint doesn't matter is just false. No matter how skillful, you still need to be able to maintain some sort of high speed to keep up with the faster players. I guess getting faster doesn't have to happen through line race, but it's a convenient metric.

Sure, there are more efficient and less efficient players (i.e. Larry, who got into the playoffs of TTO2 and TTO3 with a slowish sprint time), but even Larry has like sub 35. And in the end, he lost to players that weren't necessarily more skillful than he, but were definitely faster.

Maybe the point I'm trying to make isn't even important, because newer players will always be obsessed with sprint, but I don't think the way many more experienced players advertise sprint is fully accurate.

[officegunner]

I think sprint is important.

Those that know me on cultris II, I am obsessed with placement, and have been able to beat players playing at 2 pps with my intentional 1 pps. However, I think speed is a OP aspect of the game, especially on Cultris II.
There is a reason why Martin is better than Morphling on Cultris, and it is not just because Martin has played over 130,000 games. There is a reason the tournament winners are not players with the greatest efficency, but rather a combination of both. Speed compliments placement, and there is no denying the important of speed in a game.

For me, I switch between sprint and FFA whenever I feel like im no longer improving, and every time I changeover, I find that I improve at it because of the expereince i gained from playing the other game.

I don't think there is a problem with ppl focusing on sprint times- i think its rather important.

[gerdhal]

Fair point Aaron.

Im new too.. about 3 months back i started playing tetris on tf.

What i think is that tetris is much more complicated subject than many newcomers expect. Things like downstacking, finesse and FFA situations are not easy to comprehend. But anyone can relate to improving speed. So its easiest way for newcomers to get into action.. addictive way aswell.

I'd put it this way; whatever you do - have fun. Who loves only speed aspect of the game can go for it^^

I also played only sprint on tf when i started. Got my time from 1.35 to 1.01 and now i only focus on arena and downstack for a while.. i got bored of sprint practice. However i wanna hit sub 40 asap. For sure if u have nice sprint time it gives some respect.. thats why its important to be good at it.

[Master]

you dont have to play sprint .. you can get really fast without even playing sprint ...
thats how i got fast ..
( after i played sprint in nullpo my time was getting better and better but my speed was the same in multiplayer so ...