Tetris Online has finally listened

[coolmaninsano]

Forgot to mention this: Once I got to rank 20 on Battle beta, I played the same player over and over. Since it was a bot who ONLY did tetrises, it was very easy to beat. Sometimes I ranked down to 19 on purpose for some competition...

[Wojtek]

yes, i realize that this is about sacrificing something for something else.

but i think this is just step backward from playing against ai. you see, technically replaying prerecorded moves is just primitive form of ai. but you had to sacrifice many gameplay elements (for example downstacking, which is important aspect of tetris versus) to make this kind of ai to work.

i have to admit that tetris battle is very successful (it's biggest tetris game in term of users for now, right?) and well it's just like you say, it is not for everybody, it is just pretty illusion, some fall for it and enjoy it, while others can easily see things behind it and hate it.

well, you say this is something extra to reach where other products can't reach, believe me I would not complain at all if i could find good single player and multiplayer in other products, but looks like those are hard to find, at least outside japan (think toj, tgm).

i remember when somebody from toa said some improvements in tf.com can't be done because company is busy with other projects. so is this really something extra? because looks like development of tf.com was dropped few months ago, just like development of tf fb was dropped when tf.com showed up.

[Blink]

I've designed realtime Tetris multiplayers about 4~5 times already,
so I decided to do something different this time.

A Tetris that will last forver, so that anyone from anywhere in the world can play each other anytime.

When you say anyone can play any other person at anytime, does it mean you can select your opponent?  If yes, and you wanted to play that opponent more than once, would they be doing the exact same thing each time you play them or is it saving multiple replays from each person?  This is a problem i can see with async multiplayer, whereas in realtime multiplayer there would sometimes be long 1v1 sessions spanning over an hour with a friend, how would that translate over.

Also - I don't think any Tetris version will last forever, eventually people just get bored.  In fact I think although the game will be playable forever, its lifespan will actually be reduced because of lack of a real multiplayer.  Some games like TOJ already have AI which is similar to playing a replay, but players usually use AI/replays as practice for real live multiplayer matches.  Without a real mulitplayer, I can see people getting tired of battling replays and then it won't be the multiplayer userbase that would need worrying about, but rather users in general.  

A Tetris that you don't have to worry about not having enough players which all online games are plagued with.

Lastly, there is also a critical mass factor too..
If there aren't enough players.. you probably won't be able to find an opponent at your level of skill.. and the waiting could be forever. (ex. Tetris DS, Tetris Splash at launch was great but 1 year later it would be hard to find players at your level)

It's true that multiplayer userbases usually die down after several years.  I don't feel like that's as big of an  issue with an official PC version as compared to console versions.  PC versions are more easily updated/patched with new content extending its lifespan, also it could be that consoles phase out, and not everyone has the same console whereas almost everyone has a computer.  Tetris Online Japan, Tetris Hangame, and Tetris Friends Arena all are very popular and have a lot of players online at a time despite being years old.  By tapping into Facebooks users, I can see the number of multiplayers exploding.

An ability to be able to play multiplayer Tetris anywhere, anytime, with anyone..
Even if that person is gone ( imagine if we had a game of Michael Jackson) or busy..
the ability to play that person even if you're not online. (on planes or in the subway.. or somewhere in the world without internet connection)

Wouldn't that be awesome?

I guess everyone has their own dream.
But this is something a little silly.. I've been dreaming..

And that's what we're trying to do with FB Tetris Battle.

Yeah that does sound pretty awesome   .  I like your dream, I think it's very ambitious but good dreams usually are.  I have a question though, why couldn't there be both a live multiplayer and async multiplayer mode?  That way if there ever comes a time when the live multiplayer dies down, atleast you can still play against Michael Jackson?

I can even share some behind stories from the days back when I was working in Hangame..
those were exciting times.

Please do!! Also any other interesting stories you have about TTC, or rumors you've heard? I've heard that Blue Planet Software has been working on a game for many years now, do you know anything about it?

[caffeine]

Please do!! Also any other interesting stories you have about TTC, or rumors you've heard? I've heard that Blue Planet Software has been working on a game for many years now, do you know anything about it?

Yes, do tell! Did you have to move to Korea to work on Hangame? Wasn't there a Hangame Tetris game from before? Did the new one draw a lot of its gameplay from the old one?

[acemagic]

Yes, do tell! Did you have to move to Korea to work on Hangame? Wasn't there a Hangame Tetris game from before? Did the new one draw a lot of its gameplay from the old one?

I'll have to answer the rest of the questions later. I'm Korean born actually, and I've been raised traveling all around the world from ( north america, south america, europe, and asia).. so I originally worked for NHN/Hangame in Korea, and then had to move to Japan, and now I'm here living and working in Hawaii.

It was really tough for me in a personal end, moving all over and having to change my lifestyle so much. But I did it really because I loved the game so much, and wanted to spread what we've made to everyone and not being limited to Korea and Japan.

TTC questions are a little tricky, as I'm not allowed disclose anything. But yes BPS is also working on a Tetris Product right now, so there's more to come. But since there are several different teams working on different projects, some projects might be similar yet very different.

Oh, and to clear things for everybody.
Yes, full real-time multiplayer might come this year in facebook tetris battle.

But to make that happen we still have two more hurdles...

a) need more mass to make it an enjoyable experience.
b) we'll need to make the monetization of our service better since it costs a lot more to develop and maintain
a live service.
(flash doesn't allow p2p thus all traffic needs to go through a server-client model which is more costly to service)
We're close and getting there but we're still lacking a little bit that we need improve before we can move on.

It was easier for Hangame to do that, because Hangame was not aiming to profit from Tetris. And they already had a steady cash flow.. but if you're business relies on the fact that Tetris itself has to be profitable then it's a different story.

Lastly,
it is possible to play multiple games with that players in asynchronous gaming ( non live games ).
Actually if you check out FB Tetris Battle now, you'll notice that each game is different.
And they are all that person's game.
There are no acceleration or any manipulation on the user's game play.

Also, it's different from AI, because all strategies are organic.

An AI only works the way the programmer has intend it to.
I've build AIs for Tetris in TOJ together with talented programmers but it never really felt as real as asynchronous gaming. They don't make mistakes, there is no hesitation.. you will not see people doing b2b tetris in a row, or doing Combos and T-spins together.
However, in FB Tetris Battle, that gameplay is all there.

The big thing lacking I think is the lack of sense of timing,
but I've recently been thinking of ways to reduce that so there might be room for it to become more close to live play in the future.

Sorry, but really gotta get back to getting somethings done..
so I'll post again later today or this week.

However, I'll keep reading things as much as I can.
Thanks for the honest feedbacks.

[Ryan]

It would be cool if Facebook tetris and tetrisfriends.com could just merge some how instead of spiting the user base right up the middle.  I find it frustrating having to earn all my customizations twice.

[Kitaru]

First of all, I would like to thank you for taking the time to respond to us in such detail. I think dialogue between the players and developers is something that should happen more often for Tetris. So, again, thank you very much for your time.

I like to the fact that you can earn it. because it makes it feel more like a traditional game.
You play, earn things, and can upgrade... like an rpg.
And you get stronger as you play, and you can get adjusted to each settings appreciating it too.

I'm not a fan of withholding features that are required to be competitive to artificially extend the life of a game. Excessive grinding tends to be a detractor to a game in my eyes. If you look at the recent re-release of Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, the developers decided to give the full 52 character roster by default in light of what was revealed about the game's balance over the years it has been played; they realized that players would feel stiffed if they had to dedicate empty hours to "earning" characters required to form a competitive team. If there are unlocks, I think a decent set of the tools a player needs should be available by default.

Like Caffeine, I feel that DAS settings are more like mouse sensitivity settings in FPS games or scroll rate settings in music games; players should be able to select the best settings they are able to handle. If there are to be limits to how far these settings can be pushed, I don't think they should be any slower than Tetris Friends -- most definitely no slower than Tetris Splash.

[zaphod77]

Here's a practical demonstration of one part of Super Rotation System that really bugs me.

Problem with S/Z rotation

Under certain circumstances, the S or Z piece will not rotate when intuition suggest it should.

When a S or Z is sitting as it is in my demonstration video, you can't rotate the S counterclockwise, or a Z clockwise. you have to rotate it the other direction.  My example shows a case where the first instinct would be to rotate counterclockwise, to attempt to climb it over to the left, and one way the intended task can be accomplished.

I propose adding a feature to attempt to rotate S or Z the opposite direction, if the original attempt fails completely. In my opinion, inevitably, if basic rotation fails for an S or z, the person really wanted to rotate it the other way, if rotation the other way is possible, due to the rotational symmetry of these pieces.  What do you say, Tetris developers?   this is not appropriate for any other piece that I can think of.

[XaeL]

Here's a practical demonstration of one part of Super Rotation System that really bugs me.

Problem with S/Z rotation

Under certain circumstances, the S or Z piece will not rotate when intuition suggest it should.

When a S or Z is sitting as it is in my demonstration video, you can't rotate the S counterclockwise, or a Z clockwise. you have to rotate it the other direction.  My example shows a case where the first instinct would be to rotate counterclockwise, to attempt to climb it over to the left, and one way the intended task can be accomplished.

I propose adding a feature to attempt to rotate S or Z the opposite direction, if the original attempt fails completely. In my opinion, inevitably, if basic rotation fails for an S or z, the person really wanted to rotate it the other way, if rotation the other way is possible, due to the rotational symmetry of these pieces.  What do you say, Tetris developers?   this is not appropriate for any other piece that I can think of.

way to make game easier!

[Kitaru]

While the way Zaphod presented the problem might make it seem that way, it is still addressing a serious problem with the rotation system:
[fumen]110@reA3ubkpxbADCBKEPP98AQrTeEBPVTASI3CEvVSoEp?NdCA7eAnwqjADCBKEPP98AQrTeEBPVTASI/MEV22rDyE3CE?vVSoEpNdCA[/fumen]

[zaphod77]

right.

I demonstrated a practical situation where the person would want to try to rotate that direction for reasons other than stalling.

Either way, my solution would stop people having to drill into their head "rotate a flat Z  counterclockwise and a flat S clockwise, or they will get stuck when you least expect it" and cause a minimum of interference with anything else.

I'm not bad at surviving Guideline Tetris marathon games, but that problem still keeps getting me when i actually play a game that gets FAST (Tetris New Century Extra Mode, for one).  It also gets nearly everybody who only uses one rotate button, particularly those who have up to rotate clockwise, which is the default PC binding.

[Alexsweden]

I like the uppdates on TF battle, I dont know how good the new customization will help when maxed but it is a good step on the way!, I do hope line clear delay could be brought down to a minimum. (0 or 1 frame or something). But maybe that would cause some problems too, iduno.

Also like the extended range of ranks. From 26 or something to 50.

However I have a few questions on things that seem odd (buggs?)

1. Is is made so that you cannot  skip ranks anymore by being much faster than the opponents fast?
2. Is it just becouse the 26-50 ranks are new that there is really only small differences between 26-40. (4p)
3. The Ai that is often implented at rank 50 (4p) is pumping out times of 18 sec atm, intentional?
4. I meet quite a few anonymous at the high ranks too, are they real people?

I guess some some of these questions could be answered by that TF battle update just came out which makes sense.

Are u planing to implent more tuning? will there be a way of testing the tuning before bying as in TF so one can know what to spend the money on?

Love the ideas you have and thanks for talking to us!

Edit: (bug) Also I sometimes meet anonymous and all are around the 1.20 min time at rank 50 (normal games are under 1 min there) (4p)

[DrPete]

so I just played Tetris Battle for the first time, having had no prior experience of it (i actually had no idea it existed, and assumed it was part of the facebook Tetris Friends). having played a few games, here is my feedback:

• when you go on for the first time, there seems to be no way to cancel the "click here to play now" button and change mode or settings. there should really be a way to do this
• corollary to the above, there seems to be no way to change the keyboard settings without pausing mid-game, which due to the nature of pausing now, forces you to set all your key bindings in 30 seconds - which isn't really difficult, it's just a little strange seeing a time limit on that kind of thing
• the case for not limiting upgrades in sensitivity/softdrop speed/etc has been made before in this thread, i would just like to add emphasis to it here. I respect the need to find money from somewhere, and the RPG-like "achievement" nature of it, but it is frustrating for a skilled player to be artificially handicapped like this - imagine if chess matches gave beginners less pawns than grandmasters at the start of games
• I had no idea Tetris Battle and the facebook Tetris Friends were different apps - not to mention that the Tetris Friends facebook app and tetrisfriends.com seem to be completely different, despite tetrisfriends.com having a facebook connect button. It'd be nice to have these all integrated somehow, but I understand this probably won't happen soon if ever for political reasons

having said all that, thank you for taking the time to come here and discuss. it's refreshing to hear from a TTC employee like this without getting a load of marketing spin and corporate speak, and to actually have someone explain the issues honestly.

[acemagic]

Here's a practical demonstration of one part of Super Rotation System that really bugs me.

Problem with S/Z rotation

Under certain circumstances, the S or Z piece will not rotate when intuition suggest it should.

When a S or Z is sitting as it is in my demonstration video, you can't rotate the S counterclockwise, or a Z clockwise. you have to rotate it the other direction.  My example shows a case where the first instinct would be to rotate counterclockwise, to attempt to climb it over to the left, and one way the intended task can be accomplished.

I propose adding a feature to attempt to rotate S or Z the opposite direction, if the original attempt fails completely. In my opinion, inevitably, if basic rotation fails for an S or z, the person really wanted to rotate it the other way, if rotation the other way is possible, due to the rotational symmetry of these pieces.  What do you say, Tetris developers?   this is not appropriate for any other piece that I can think of.

This is quite interesting.

Super Rotation is TTC guideline, so it's nothing I can change, but when I used to work for Hangame.
We used a totally different rotation system.
I actually miss that system so much sometimes.. I've thought about making a special piece that rotates it that way. However, users won't be able to do T-spins with that one.

I'll look into this, although there is very little leverage in our side to change any of this, and we're only a licensee.

so I just played Tetris Battle for the first time, having had no prior experience of it (i actually had no idea it existed, and assumed it was part of the facebook Tetris Friends). having played a few games, here is my feedback:

• when you go on for the first time, there seems to be no way to cancel the "click here to play now" button and change mode or settings. there should really be a way to do this
• corollary to the above, there seems to be no way to change the keyboard settings without pausing mid-game, which due to the nature of pausing now, forces you to set all your key bindings in 30 seconds - which isn't really difficult, it's just a little strange seeing a time limit on that kind of thing
• the case for not limiting upgrades in sensitivity/softdrop speed/etc has been made before in this thread, i would just like to add emphasis to it here. I respect the need to find money from somewhere, and the RPG-like "achievement" nature of it, but it is frustrating for a skilled player to be artificially handicapped like this - imagine if chess matches gave beginners less pawns than grandmasters at the start of games
• I had no idea Tetris Battle and the facebook Tetris Friends were different apps - not to mention that the Tetris Friends facebook app and tetrisfriends.com seem to be completely different, despite tetrisfriends.com having a facebook connect button. It'd be nice to have these all integrated somehow, but I understand this probably won't happen soon if ever for political reasons

having said all that, thank you for taking the time to come here and discuss. it's refreshing to hear from a TTC employee like this without getting a load of marketing spin and corporate speak, and to actually have someone explain the issues honestly.

Thank you too for the honest feedback!
Any feedback is always helpful to us!
Yes.. there are some politics like anywhere.. that makes certain things harder..

However, I am considering moving some single player modes to FB Tetris Battle,
since you can't take advantage of the upgrades in FB Tetris Friends.

Let me know if there's any interesting single player modes you'll like to see in FB.

I like the uppdates on TF battle, I dont know how good the new customization will help when maxed but it is a good step on the way!, I do hope line clear delay could be brought down to a minimum. (0 or 1 frame or something). But maybe that would cause some problems too, iduno.

Also like the extended range of ranks. From 26 or something to 50.

However I have a few questions on things that seem odd (buggs?)

1. Is is made so that you cannot  skip ranks anymore by being much faster than the opponents fast?
2. Is it just becouse the 26-50 ranks are new that there is really only small differences between 26-40. (4p)
3. The Ai that is often implented at rank 50 (4p) is pumping out times of 18 sec atm, intentional?
4. I meet quite a few anonymous at the high ranks too, are they real people?

I guess some some of these questions could be answered by that TF battle update just came out which makes sense.

Are u planing to implent more tuning? will there be a way of testing the tuning before bying as in TF so one can know what to spend the money on?

Love the ideas you have and thanks for talking to us!

Edit: (bug) Also I sometimes meet anonymous and all are around the 1.20 min time at rank 50 (normal games are under 1 min there) (4p)

To answer some of the questions..

1) You should still can (unless there is a bug) there's a limit to that (something like up to Rank 15)
this is because of the fact that the special promotion system is so easy to abuse.
Higher ranks, we're trying to make it so that only really good people can get there to make the live matching more accurate to the users's skills.

2) Yes. We're still in the rebalancing.
It takes a while for the users to jump up there to where they should be, and we're going to need to wait until it's ready before readjust things.


3) AI is actually intended only as the last measure.. if you see a lot, it could actually be a bug.
Please let us know. Also AIs are harder to balance too, so we don't intent to use it so much.
But I'll look into this a little more. It could be a bug.

(By AI do you mean that it actually displays A.I?)

4) There is a permission that could have caused it not to give us the name.
But I'll have to look into it.
If it's anonymous, however, it should still be a game by a person (someone).


Are u planing to implent more tuning? will there be a way of testing the tuning before bying as in TF so one can know what to spend the money on?

=> yes there will be more levels and things coming.
But we'll like to hear more from the community before moving forward.

Yes, we too wish there was a way. but making the UI easy to understand is the issue,
so we're looking into that as well. Thank you for the feedback.

[zaphod77]

This is quite interesting.

Super Rotation is TTC guideline, so it's nothing I can change, but when I used to work for Hangame.
We used a totally different rotation system.
I actually miss that system so much sometimes.. I've thought about making a special piece that rotates it that way. However, users won't be able to do T-spins with that one.

I'll look into this, although there is very little leverage in our side to change any of this, and we're only a licensee.

My idea doesn't remove anything from Super Rotation System. It simply adds a special case for attempting to rotate pieces that have rotational symmetry.

Only when the piece would fail to rotate at all even with any of the kicks, then would it try the other direction. And only if it's an S or a Z (O of course has rotational symmetry, but no kicks).

And yes, I am proposing an improvement to SRS, to be brought up at the next Guideline meeting.

I repeat. My idea allows everything that currently works in SRS to still work, but allows two additional rotation cases that would otherwise fail.

I screwed up in my summary. I meant that if rotation with all four wallkicks fails...