Tetris Friends is killing tetris and tetris community

[Someone2knoe]

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--] I think all of the negative attitude towards tf and the players also drives people away from Tetris. I don't like going to communities where the majority is a group of people who are almost never positive.
[/quote]

In my opinion I think that the negative attitude is just the product of people being realistic. We are bashing on the negative aspects of TF because we want them to make changes. We tend to get pretty immature and forget the facts though, which is probably what you are referring to.

What it really boils down to is we are trying to get people to play other games that should be more promising than TF because of the quality of those games. In my experience, many TF players don't care enough about the game to want to switch over. That is what causes a lot of our hatred for it.

[exchliore]

Contrary to popular belief, only the compusively obsessed multiplayer Tetris community is hurting. I'd wager that most "Tetris" players do not play multiplayer or competitive Tetris at all. Instead there may be a large community that only play single player modes. Otherwise there would be no weekly Tetris Friends missions if there was no interest in single player. And it is not as if weekly missions aren't trivial to create as they need devs and a QA team. I would think that because these missions are continually rolling out, that there is enough revenue to support the team. Too bad there are no publicly available statistics, but Tetris Friends could secretly have a huge casual user base instead compared to the handful of platinum players on Arena. The Tetris Friends' team isn't deciding to kill the Tetris community, but rather to focus on what most of the players like to do.

This leads to development and support in areas that concern casual gamers the most (ie. adding casual content, and there is a lot of casual content). Focusing on das and elite tournaments doesn't help the casual community at all. Realistically, only a small percentage of the community can even play at the top das settings offered on Tetris Friends. Opening more options or developing farther on those lines is just throwing money out the window. Not because no one would use it, but because everyone here would still be unhappy and/or boycott anyway (let's face it, no one here wants to pay for anything. I can go through the forums and everyone's found ways to not pay for sensitivities or to use free alternatives for tons of other games out there.). Contrary to popular belief, Devs and QA like being able to pay rent.

@negative attitudes to Tetris Friends
I've made this point before and it still holds true today. This community (harddrop) holds an elitism that does not accept casual players. Many other Tetris games hardly cater to casual players, if at all. A lot of visitors come to this forum and get this:

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]...What it really boils down to is we are trying to get people to play other games that should be more promising than TF because of the quality of those games. In my experience, many TF players don't care enough about the game to want to switch over...[/quote]

What's more promising than endless casual content? BlockBox and nullp don't provide this. Competition, leagues, elitism... all uninteresting to the casual gamer. Casual gamers want to talk about the games they want to play and for the most part, that is Tetris Friends. If people come here and say we play game X and that game doesn't have das or multiplayer they'll instantly be told that they've failed at life and to play game Y (actually unless they're already playing game Y, I think they'll be told that they've failed at life). I think that this is a huge negative view of Tetris Friends. Why would any Tetris Friends' player come here to say "Hi I'm from Tetris Friends" when the first response is "Step 1. Burn your clothes; Step 2. Download this game you will probably hate; Step 3. Play Tetris how we think you should play it, not how you want to play it".

I'm not arguing that there is anything wrong with this, but please don't hide behind excuses and say that the site is for every Tetris player out there and that everyone is looking out for the entire Tetris community's best interests. It clearly is not the case and this community as this community rejects/puts down/turns away more Tetris players than it keeps.

[Someone2knoe]

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]    Contrary to popular belief, only the compusively obsessed multiplayer Tetris community is hurting.[/quote]  

I disagree.

Anyway, all I want is a game that can encompass casual players and hardcore players. TF can fix a few things to make that possible. Refer to Blink's petition if you want to know what things I think need to be changed.

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]I've made this point before and it still holds true today. This community (harddrop) holds an elitism that does not accept casual players. [/quote]

It was just an observation that most casual players are uninterested in anything tetris related besides just playing the game. I don't blame casual players for that.

Also don't speak for the community as a whole. You are part of the community and so are casual players. I would tend to disagree with such a general statement.

[EnFuego]

Tetris is better off than it was 2 years ago when I started playing. TF might be killing a bunch of people's interest, but the 1% who do make it out of TF and look for a greater challenge contribute to the community. That is a good amount of people that we would not get otherwise.

@negative attitudes to Tetris Friends
I've made this point before and it still holds true today. This community (harddrop) holds an elitism that does not accept casual players. Many other Tetris games hardly cater to casual players, if at all. A lot of visitors come to this forum and get this:
What's more promising than endless casual content? BlockBox and nullp don't provide this. Competition, leagues, elitism... all uninteresting to the casual gamer. Casual gamers want to talk about the games they want to play and for the most part, that is Tetris Friends. If people come here and say we play game X and that game doesn't have das or multiplayer they'll instantly be told that they've failed at life and to play game Y (actually unless they're already playing game Y, I think they'll be told that they've failed at life). I think that this is a huge negative view of Tetris Friends. Why would any Tetris Friends' player come here to say "Hi I'm from Tetris Friends" when the first response is "Step 1. Burn your clothes; Step 2. Download this game you will probably hate; Step 3. Play Tetris how we think you should play it, not how you want to play it".

Sweet troll post dude. Trolling is a pro way to make friends.

Here is a fast fact: Nullpo and Blockbox each have many casual modes for all types of players.

We hate TF because it is inferior, not because many noobs play it. Nullpo has every mode TF has with more customization. You don't have an argument for TF being inferior, so you call harddrop elitist.

[exchliore]

For some strange reason, I can't reply to two people in two different posts. So they are both here. Look for @Someone2knoe and @EnFuego.

@Someone2knoe

I disagree.

Anyway, all I want is a game that can encompass casual players and hardcore players. TF can fix a few things to make that possible. Refer to Blink's petition if you want to know what things I think need to be changed.

Why do you disagree? Do you think the main Tetris Friend's playerbase would benefit from any change in the petition? No. These changes are for you and you only. There is no "casual" at all in this petition.

Also, I can say that there is a large casual population playing Tetris Friends, again through my weekly missions argument. There would be no weekly missions if it couldn't support a dev team (and they are not cheap to support). And also, the weekly missions are cheap. You'd need a lot of users to buy them to keep the site afloat. Otherwise, it would be pointless to continue investing developer time on such missions. What community do you think is keeping Tetris Friends afloat?

It was just an observation that most casual players are uninterested in anything tetris related besides just playing the game. I don't blame casual players for that.

Also don't speak for the community as a whole. You are part of the community and so are casual players. I would tend to disagree with such a general statement.

My previous quote is completely true. Almost any post about a game that isn't on this community's approved list gets flamed right away. My introduction was flamed, as well as almost every single one of my other posts. The message this community gives is that if you don't play any of the approved games, then you are bad and we don't want your opinion. Let's say I make a post and call it "How much I like Tetris Friends", it would be immediately put down, flamed, and then possibly closed. In fact, I can only expect users who would trash the game immediately and then personally attack me as a Tetris player. Even you would agree with that. Your first response to any such post would be "Please stop playing that terrible game. Download nullp and then you get a voice in this community. kthxbai". Unless they want to be better at multiplayer tetris, I don't see a lot of casual gamers that would want to come to this forum.

Also, it seems that you agree that your disposition is different from a casual gamer. You clearly do not like Tetris Friends and your goal is to convert players to a more hardcore game. Why? You know that's not what the casual player wants. And it's not really just "your" view here. This seems to be the greater harddrop community's view (read the forums much? this is the message the forums send out to the community). Why would any casual player want to come here? All threads on TF are negative and all of it becomes a huge bash-orgy/fest.

Games with more "promise"? What's more promise than weekly missions? Apparently there's enough casual gamers to support Tetris Friends and all you can say is that there are better games out there that are more "promising". Let's face it, there are no other places that cater to casual Tetris gamers better than Tetris Friends.

Also, just to requote you:

...we are trying to get people to play other games that should be more promising than TF....

This doesn't sound like just your opinion, this sounds like you are speaking for the collective voices in this forum. Sure you can replace "we" with "I" but it doesn't change the fact that the majority of the voices of this forum would probably get behind that statement.

@EnFuego

Sweet troll post dude. Trolling is a pro way to make friends.Here is a fast fact: Nullpo and Blockbox each have many casual modes for all types of players.

It's not a troll post. It's the truth. You label it as a troll post because you can't even fathom the words I'm saying as plausible. In fact, you'd be another one of the people who'd flame my posts. Who cares what game I play, the last thing I want to hear is that my game is terrible and that I should play your game because it's "better". And then you'll post a list of reasons why it's "better", none of which may appeal to me. And back to my main point, this is a super negative view towards Tetris Friends on this forum. You seem to do exactly what I said would happen in my post. The first thing you do is flame me, and then tell me that games y and z are better. Who cares if game y and z are better, what if I only want to play Tetris Friends? Does that exclude me from this community? Will the community shun me and flame me for my opinions and view of a common/everyday video game? If yes, then this community is elitist. My biggest question is why do you say that you are not?

.Here is a fast fact: Nullpo and Blockbox each have many casual modes for all types of players.

Hardly, these games are tuned for enthusiasts. They're all hard to set up and use and none of it is easy to play. The difficulty level to set up the game disqualifies it from casual at all. Even worse, Nullpo doesn't even run on my computer. Why do I need to set up a VM to play this game? How do other casual players access this game when it's not guaranteed to run on their computers. Also, where's my weekly challenges and missions? Can I post my achievements to facebook? Are there even achievements?

We hate TF because it is inferior, not because many noobs play it. Nullpo has every mode TF has with more customization. You don't have an argument for TF being inferior, so you call harddrop elitist.

TF is inferior in "your" opinion, not mine. I have lots of arguments for the pros and cons of TF, but that's not what is at discussion here. What's at discussion is whether or not TF is killing the community and I don't think it is. There's enough of a community there to support the website. Just because you think the website is terrible and it doesn't offer you the same sensation as nullp, that doesn't mean the community is dying. It means the website is not for you. If the website couldn't support itself, then it would be another story. Also, if someone were to ask me where to play Tetris, my immediate answer would be Tetris Friends. I wouldn't even need to think twice.

[Wojtek]

Also, I can say that there is a large casual population playing Tetris Friends, again through my weekly missions argument. There would be no weekly missions if it couldn't support a dev team (and they are not cheap to support). And also, the weekly missions are cheap. You'd need a lot of users to buy them to keep the site afloat. Otherwise, it would be pointless to continue investing developer time on such missions. What community do you think is keeping Tetris Friends afloat?

you are totally wrong about missions, TF keep doing missions because their team is lazy and not very skilled and making missions is far less challenging than developing new features or improving old features.

weekly missions is just gimmick more or less and almost not require any work to make them, but i dont really know why they keep doing premium mission, from their stats (Completed By stat for premium missions and i estimate numer of active users by myself) it looks like only small fraction of users ever touch premium missions, maybe 1 user per 500 or 1000 or even less. so look like they putting lot of resources (premium missions require both coding and artwork) for features that only tiny fraction can benefit from, this makes no sense at all.

[xlro]

Can I post my achievements to facebook? Are there even achievements?

this made me grin pretty hard

I guess we all know why TTC tunes its games towards casual gamers first and foremost - that's not really big news.
I agree that there is obviously no gain in mindless bashing of any game, but I guess that is just what happens when a bunch of people of all ages come together on a site/forum, which is mainly focused on the "community" and fun part of tetris, combined with a rather strong competitive drive. (and less on the technical side, like I would categorize TC for example)

I'm not really sure what you want to tell us tho - what is the point of a forum, when you can't discuss the games and hear the opinions of passionate tetris players, who have tried a wide variety of games and/or have been playing these games for a long time. Personally (even tho I'm not a 'hardcore' player myself, by any means), I prefer reading their arguments towards tetris, than a lot of posts from purely casual players who just have to note again that "TF rocks! it's so shiny!". I'm not saying there is no place for this here - tbh, if there is a tetris site, where this content can also nicely exist and fit the overall site's theme, it's probably HD.

As I said, mindless bashing should ofc be kept to a minimum, where possible, but I think everybody agrees on that.

[Dirtdobber]

The Face of Tetris and his army frowns upon all of you.

[EnFuego]

@EnFuego
It's not a troll post. It's the truth. You label it as a troll post because you can't even fathom the words I'm saying as plausible. In fact, you'd be another one of the people who'd flame my posts. Who cares what game I play, the last thing I want to hear is that my game is terrible and that I should play your game because it's "better". And then you'll post a list of reasons why it's "better", none of which may appeal to me. And back to my main point, this is a super negative view towards Tetris Friends on this forum. You seem to do exactly what I said would happen in my post. The first thing you do is flame me, and then tell me that games y and z are better. Who cares if game y and z are better, what if I only want to play Tetris Friends? Does that exclude me from this community? Will the community shun me and flame me for my opinions and view of a common/everyday video game? If yes, then this community is elitist. My biggest question is why do you say that you are not?
Hardly, these games are tuned for enthusiasts. They're all hard to set up and use and none of it is easy to play. The difficulty level to set up the game disqualifies it from casual at all. Even worse, Nullpo doesn't even run on my computer. Why do I need to set up a VM to play this game? How do other casual players access this game when it's not guaranteed to run on their computers. Also, where's my weekly challenges and missions? Can I post my achievements to facebook? Are there even achievements?
TF is inferior in "your" opinion, not mine. I have lots of arguments for the pros and cons of TF, but that's not what is at discussion here. What's at discussion is whether or not TF is killing the community and I don't think it is. There's enough of a community there to support the website. Just because you think the website is terrible and it doesn't offer you the same sensation as nullp, that doesn't mean the community is dying. It means the website is not for you. If the website couldn't support itself, then it would be another story. Also, if someone were to ask me where to play Tetris, my immediate answer would be Tetris Friends. I wouldn't even need to think twice.

First, if you click the quote button below the post you can do that for multiple posts.

This is the exact definition of a troll. You feel out of touch from the community and pissed off by this thread, So you make stupid arguments to try and get sympathy from people and piss off other people who won't give you sympathy. This is not elitist, this is an anti-troll post.


You are not even arguing the post at hand. Wojtek's point was that people play TF until they get decent and then get pissed off, due to poor quality, and quit tetris all together. You have not made a contribution to the argument at all.
You would think the people who play tetris every day or even at least once a week are the core community members. You could hypothesize that someone who starts playing tetris on a more serious version than TF is more likely to become a community member and stay a community member.

[exchliore]

you are totally wrong about missions, TF keep doing missions because their team is lazy and not very skilled and making missions is far less challenging than developing new features or improving old features.

You think TF should hire "skilled" developers? Are you up for the challenge? I haven't seen you do anything in a while. Maybe you should submit a resume.

weekly missions is just gimmick more or less and almost not require any work to make them, but i dont really know why they keep doing premium mission, from their stats (Completed By stat for premium missions and i estimate numer of active users by myself) it looks like only small fraction of users ever touch premium missions, maybe 1 user per 500 or 1000 or even less. so look like they putting lot of resources (premium missions require both coding and artwork) for features that only tiny fraction can benefit from, this makes no sense at all.

Is making missions really not "challenging"? Does the "Completed By" stat really reflect the "Number of missions purchased"? Also, how do you estimate any number from the website? It's all so random. Realize that these missions are nontrivial for a lot of people to do so it's possible that not a lot of people complete them. Also, do you think putting all of their resources on "hardcore" features would help bring in revenue? What's the guarantee that anyone from this forum will purchase anything TF develops? If there wasn't any revenue at all though, I'd think that all these projects would be dropped completely.

Also let's not forget their QA teams! People always forget the QA cycle, and it's sad that QA never gets any credit.

[Blink]

I've made this point before and it still holds true today. This community (harddrop) holds an elitism that does not accept casual players. Many other Tetris games hardly cater to casual players, if at all. A lot of visitors come to this forum and get this:

Despite a few people, I'd like to think HD is about as non-elitist as a community can be.  We have players from all different versions of Tetris, and a large deal of our members are casual players.  From the start this place was meant to be a website that accepts all players, no matter what version of Tetris they play.  The majority of our userbase are TF players, which as you've already stated are primarily casual.  Yes there are some TF bashers, but no community has members that 100% agree on everything.  

To say we don't accept casual players confuses me because we've held just as many tournaments on TF as we have on other games.  There are threads praising TF's improvements just as there are threads pointing out its flaws.  In fact, the upcoming tournament with prizes is going to be held on TF.  To point out flaws in a game isn't elitist at all, there are plenty of threads on Facebook from casual players requesting less lag or better features.  Problems like lag are important to everyone.  Yes there are times when a few members demonstrate elitism and bash on other games without any valid points, but this is a rare occurrence and it doesn't reflect the entire community.  

With that being said, what would you do differently to HD to be more accepting of casual players? Because by looking at the large amount of casual players compared to few hardcore players on this site, I think we're doing a good job already.

Contrary to popular belief, only the compusively obsessed multiplayer Tetris community is hurting

Not true.  I will not say who but a Tetris Friends staff member has said that they are focusing on other projects such as their Facebook RPG "Lost Trails" because of the decreased activity on TetrisFriends.com, possibly due to school.  TGM4's recent cancellation notice also shows that this isn't limited to multiplayer Tetris communities.

[exchliore]

First, if you click the quote button below the post you can do that for multiple posts.

This is the exact definition of a troll. You feel out of touch from the community and pissed off by this thread, So you make stupid arguments to try and get sympathy from people and piss off other people who won't give you sympathy. This is not elitist, this is an anti-troll post.

I'm not sure you really know what a troll is.

I'm not out of touch with the community. Also, how are my arguments stupid? You haven't even contended with them.

In fact your reply is a simple copy+paste default message for anyone who likes TF. That, my friend, is elitist.

You are not even arguing the post at hand. Wojtek's point was that people play TF until they get decent and then get pissed off, due to poor quality, and quit tetris all together. You have not made a contribution to the argument at all.
You would think the people who play tetris every day or even at least once a week are the core community members. You could hypothesize that someone who starts playing tetris on a more serious version than TF is more likely to become a community member and stay a community member.

I don't remember Wojtek making an argument about people starting on TF and quitting. Wojtek is complaining about TF stealing users from BBox, nullP, etc. and then killing their Tetris spirits. I'm sorry, but people lose interest in Tetris all the time. Is it really because of TF? Do you think if TF never came out that they would have never quit? Why is it so wrong for TF to "steal" users from other games? What if users like TF more? Is it wrong to make a product that is "better" ("better" being defined by the players who left other games for TF)?

Who are core community members? Of what community? This one? I'm pretty sure you're not talking about this community. 2400 members is not a lot compared to the number of people who are subscribed to TF on facebook. What's the ratio of casual to non-casual gamers on this site? Is it representative of the entire Tetris community? Do you think that other Tetris communities take a lot from these forums? What about people who don't care about multiplayer play? What do you think about people who play Tetris at least once a week, but will never play Arena or multiplayer at all? Is there a reason for them to be here. Are they properly represented by the petition?

It's a lot of haziness and I think that a lot of it is overlooked.

[Someone2knoe]

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--] I haven't seen you do anything in a while. Maybe you should submit a resume.[/quote]  

I think that is completely disrespectful toward Wojtek. He has contributed so much to tetris and this community.  If TF put as much effort into the game development as Wojtek and others have we would have something amazing.

[Wojtek]

sorry for being unclear.
[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]Wojtek's point was that people play TF until they get decent and then get pissed off, due to poor quality, and quit tetris all together. [/quote]
this is what i meant, but this:
[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]Wojtek is complaining about TF stealing users from BBox, nullP, etc. and then killing their Tetris spirits.[/quote]
is also what i think.

let me explain, person who are interested in playing tetris, look for tetris game, he finds tf and start playing it, he learn how to play game and from then he pretty much has nothing to do there. tf features for regular users focus on pointless grinding and general fb games crap and not on tetris and challenge/competition and getting better. he would probably leave tetris forever and looks for more fun games.

[Blink]

I agree, that's very disrespectful.  Wojtek has done a lot to try to improve the Tetris scene.  He created the TOJ launcher to make playing TOJ easier, developed iiBlocks, is currently still actively working on Nullpomino, and more.  He also worked together with Tetris Friends staff members to fix several very serious security issues that you are not aware about.