Four Wide

[sonic]

well, i suppose i ought to chip in my 2 cents here   what can be said that hasn't already been said? tetris is war. it is a war between the quickness of peoples minds and fingers. if a person chooses to stab opponents with tetrises, or shoot them with tsd's: that's a perfectly valid method of warfare. i prefer to lob a nuke over the fence if i can. especially if my opponent is faster than i am. which many people are. and that's cool with me, in fact it makes the game fun. beating someone who is faster or more skilled is immensely satisfying. and those who hate my style or find me annoying to play are generally people who are significantly faster and feel they deserve to beat me much more than they do. which speaks directly to the effectiveness of the strategy. my speed hasn't improved any in a long time, and i don't expect to get much faster. my ancient geriatric brain and withered wrinkled fingers have reached as far as i care to take them with that aspect of this game. so  here's to you haters!  keep hating, i'm gonna keep playing the same way until i can find something even more deadly and 'annoying'.
on a side note - it seems that sprint is the commonly accepted measurment of skill level. thats a fine and dandy tool of this society, but as a slow old man like me has shown, not the only measurement of skill. my best sprint is 51 seconds. there are plenty of sub-40 people that i can go toe to toe with and come out on top. 4w is a handy tool to that end
p.s. thanks to all my friends and 'fans' for the support        
the end
sonic

[Paul676]

well, i suppose i ought to chip in my 2 cents here   what can be said that hasn't already been said? tetris is war. it is a war between the quickness of peoples minds and fingers. if a person chooses to stab opponents with tetrises, or shoot them with tsd's: that's a perfectly valid method of warfare. i prefer to lob a nuke over the fence if i can. especially if my opponent is faster than i am. which many people are. and that's cool with me, in fact it makes the game fun. beating someone who is faster or more skilled is immensely satisfying. and those who hate my style or find me annoying to play are generally people who are significantly faster and feel they deserve to beat me much more than they do. which speaks directly to the effectiveness of the strategy. my speed hasn't improved any in a long time, and i don't expect to get much faster. my ancient geriatric brain and withered wrinkled fingers have reached as far as i care to take them with that aspect of this game. so  here's to you haters!  keep hating, i'm gonna keep playing the same way until i can find something even more deadly and 'annoying'.
on a side note - it seems that sprint is the commonly accepted measurment of skill level. thats a fine and dandy tool of this society, but as a slow old man like me has shown, not the only measurement of skill. my best sprint is 51 seconds. there are plenty of sub-40 people that i can go toe to toe with and come out on top. 4w is a handy tool to that end
p.s. thanks to all my friends and 'fans' for the support        
the end
sonic

if this was facebook I'd have liked this comment. In fact, blink, please could we have a "liking" system like facebook's?

[Kitaru]

I'm for some combo tweaking or refinement, but anyone that says they refrain from it due to some sense of what is "honorable" is full of it.

[Paul676]

and this is the bigotry which Aaron set out to put and end to with this thread.

/thread over

[coolmaninsano]

Sonic I completely agree. HAHAHA's 40 lines time is probably twenty seconds faster than yours. But you were able to take 14 of 30 games off of him, while when I played him I got 1 of 19.

Now if the TTO match was 15-2 for HAHAHA, would that have been exciting? No. Not as much as a 16-14 battle.

[chopin]

tst with b2b: 3 lines cleared, 7 lines sent. Attack per line= 2.3=7/3
Therefore tsds have more power per piece than tsts.

On many games such as NullpoMino, TOJ, (and other games like Battle 2P) TSTs are rewarded with +2 B2B.

I think the biggest take-home message from the vid is that during this particular matchup, the comboer might have a lucky case where he can simultaneously add a Tetris while extending his combo, which is straight up brutal.

Those who play comboers know that this 'lucky' case happens pretty much every game. I think that the opponent of combo has to rely too much on luck and hoping that the Comboer fails.

well, i suppose i ought to chip in my 2 cents here   what can be said that hasn't already been said? tetris is war. it is a war between the quickness of peoples minds and fingers. if a person chooses to stab opponents with tetrises, or shoot them with tsd's: that's a perfectly valid method of warfare. i prefer to lob a nuke over the fence if i can. especially if my opponent is faster than i am. which many people are. and that's cool with me, in fact it makes the game fun. beating someone who is faster or more skilled is immensely satisfying. and those who hate my style or find me annoying to play are generally people who are significantly faster and feel they deserve to beat me much more than they do.

Sonic I completely agree. HAHAHA's 40 lines time is probably twenty seconds faster than yours. But you were able to take 14 of 30 games off of him, while when I played him I got 1 of 19.
Now if the TTO match was 15-2 for HAHAHA, would that have been exciting? No. Not as much as a 16-14 battle.

lol Yeah I guess you are right Sonic, but isn't the point here to not see if Combo is a noob strategy, but whether or not it is too strong? Of course that game wouldn't have been exciting if Sonic didn't send HAHAHA a full red bar every other game, but I don't see how that proves anything. It sounds like we all are agreeing that combo is too strong and yet everyone should use them.

Of course combo starts (and especially mid game combo setups) is like bringing a gun to a sword fight, but don't you all think that Combo should be nerfed? 5 line sends per clear is insane. We were talking about T-Spin Singles and how efficient they were that they can send 3 lines each, yet here combo can send 5 lines a piece..

[Paul676]

On many games such as NullpoMino, TOJ, (and other games like Battle 2P) TSTs are rewarded with +2 B2B.

Those who play comboers know that this 'lucky' case happens pretty much every game. I think that the opponent of combo has to rely too much on luck and hoping that the Comboer fails.

We were talking about T-Spin Singles and how efficient they were that they can send 3 lines each, yet here combo can send 5 lines a piece..

Point 1. Fair enough, I modify my statement to "slightly less or slightly more powerful depending on what game you're playing"

Point 2. It happens precisely 40% of the time, as you have already said.

Point 3. After the 13th line cleared, (i.e. 12th combo) it sends 5 lines per 2.5 pieces (remember 1 line=2.5 pieces). Which is 2 lines per piece. Which is the same as tsd+b2b bonus. I leave to personal opinion whether that's bad.

[chopin]

Point 1. Fair enough, I modify my statement to "slightly less or slightly more powerful depending on what game you're playing"

Point 2. It happens precisely 40% of the time, as you have already said.

Point 3. After the 13th line cleared, (i.e. 12th combo) it sends 5 lines per 2.5 pieces (remember 1 line=2.5 pieces). Which is 2 lines per piece. Which is the same as tsd+b2b bonus. I leave to personal opinion whether that's bad.

#2. Yes but I also said that even if it doesn't come up 40% in the middle you can easily downstack it after the combo is done. Seriously I can rarely beat Sonic or Zero when they combo.. I feel that there's nothing I can do.

#3. I don't see why pieces matter. You can assume that line clears are all going to require equal amounts of cells (i.e. 10 cells) so you can just compare by output of each line clear.

[Paradox]

In the video the t-spinner does an amazing job yet still loses in many cases. I don't know anyone that plays fast and t-spins that well but many 4widers can pull of high combos like that with ease it seems.

In regards to changing combos:

With some testing I did myself I personally liked the results of 0,0,1,1,1etc, but that was with weakened t-spins.

0,1,1,1,1,1 might be better for games with strong t-spins.

The reason I like it is because it doesn't leave you completely helpless against higher combos. But it still has a lot of strength with its messy garbage. To me every type of line clear should have its use in the game. Making the combo send single garbage lines makes it very useful in an overall strategy. It would become more useful to do a mixture of combos and other forms of line clears.

With the current garbage system you can basically rely on the combo strategy as it will work very well in 1v1.

With the testing I did with my weakened combos I noticed that they are still valid starts. Not only that but efficient downstacking is rewarded much more heavily. Midgame downstack combos became very useful for the messy garbage it sends, but didn't immediately top out the opponent. Instead it would reward you for the downstacking effort, you would then have to follow through with a heavier line send depending on your opponent's field.

[meow]

it is almost impossible for a tspinner to play efficiently for a prolonged period of time.

sonic, i understand you completely.

combos could be nerfed, if properly done, on TF. as i see it, this imbalance seems to exist solely on TF.

one of chopin's test showed that tspins can almost compete with max efficiency. i believe 4wide has more risk so this is about right.

[Paradox]

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--] one of chopin's test showed that tspins can almost compete with max efficiency. i believe 4wide has more risk so this is about right.[/quote]

What do you think makes it risky?

If it is the luck of pieces then I don't think that is good. That just means when they get lucky they will only be maybe stopped by a t-spinner with max efficiency.

[Kitaru]

and this is the bigotry which Aaron set out to put and end to with this thread.

/thread over

No? It's actually telling people to stop making excuses -- many of which I've still been seeing in this thread. It's fine to talk about ways in which the rules can be refined, but looking down on a win because it was done with a so-called "dishonorable" tactic is a cop out.

That said, I do think that combos have gradually drifted away from being just another tool in a player's repertoire. As sonic puts it, a proper combo is something of an "atom bomb" -- something I think doesn't quite fit in with the rest of the game as it stands.

[Paul676]

nonono Kitaru I was agreeing with you

i.e. you had just shown up other people's bigotry for what it is which Aaron set out to put an end to in this thread.

hence I said thread over because we'd identified it

If a combo is an atom bomb, and REALLY REALLY OP in tf, why the hell was only 1/16 who went into the TTO finals a comboer, and 0 4 widers? If it is so OP, there should have been more.

in answer to Paradox:

It takes 5 pieces to tsd. if you misdrop you can generally salvage it, or at least make another tsd quickly.

It takes 30 pieces to make a 4 wide which might instant KO someone. If you md you will 80% of the time be screwed. A hard task not to misdrop on tf, isn't it? If you fail a 4 wide, you can't rebuild it.

[chopin]

I don't understand how you are factoring misdrops into this. It makes no sense LOL. If you're most likely going to misdrop on TF, doesn't your opponent have the same possibility to misdrop? It's not like 4 wide is likely to misdrop more because of the build choice. In most situations, 4 wide can either clean it up and then just combo down and clear out the misdrop. If anything, misdrops are worse for the opponent of Combo. A misdrop from 4 wide usually has many more options than from a T-Spinner who is then helpless. If anything this is another strength of the 4-Wide Combo.
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[Beastin_Shen]

4 wide 4 shmide, its annoying but i cant do it, it comes down to whether or not its the way you want tetris to be played, which is why it annoys some of us. as long as it isnt super overpowered im ok with it.

the shuttle in meows signature is epic