Official Puyo Puyo Tetris @ AnimEVO Discussion Thread

[Kiyobi]

Hey guys, I'm starting a new thread for the Puyo Tetris AnimEVO side tourney to keep all the discussion in one place, and so I can have the first post editable for all information about the tournament in one place.

So first off, here's the rules and details:

As it stands, there will be two brackets: One for Versus mode and one for Swap mode. There is now only a Swap mode tournament for AnimEVO. The tournament will be officially run on Playstation 4, but tourney matches may be commenced on Switch only if both players agree to it.

Both tournaments will be double elimination. Each match will consist of best 2 out of 3 games, 2 out of 3 rounds, with the exception of Winners Finals, Losers Finals, and Grand Finals, which will be 3 out of 5 games.

After each game, the loser may opt to switch between Puyo and Tetris. Since characters don't matter, both winner and loser may change characters at will after any game.

I do have an important discussion topic I'd like to lead this thread off with.
I've been talking to the Puyo Nexus community about including hard drop for Puyo, which is off by default. I was considering enabling this for AnimEVO and was met with a general consensus of "Puyo VS Tetris is not fun anyway; the Versus bracket will just be full of Tetris mirror matches."

So, I'd like to ask you guys, would you still enter if I dropped Versus and ran only Swap for AnimEVO? Is being forced to play Puyo Puyo enough of a deterrent to keep you from entering?

[S2PID]

I was considering enabling this for AnimEVO and was met with a general consensus of "Puyo VS Tetris is not fun anyway; the Versus bracket will just be full of Tetris mirror matches."

hm way to be reductive about all the points that were brought up in the Puyo Nexus discord lol
So there's no misunderstandings, I will list off the opinions of the Puyo community here for you guys.

1. The Puyo vs Tetris "matchup"
Fighting Tetris with Puyo Puyo just plain sucks.

• Perfect Clears do ridiculous damage - (ridiculous for an opener with a 74% success rate) (or maybe even more than 74% soon?). A Double Perfect clear followed up with one or two more fast T-Spins fills up enough space on a Puyo board to make it impossible to construct a chain that's long enough to kill.
• Half the meta game in traditional Puyo vs Puyo is reading your opponent and timing small chains to attack their weakpoints. None of that is possible in Puyo VS Tetris because... Tetris effectively has no weakpoints. If Puyo can't get a kill chain then Tetris can just downstack it all. Actually, if the Tetris player gets lucky garbage holes, those might end up helping the Tetris player kill you. There's an inherent problem with the way Tetris handles garbage with single unit holes. Since Puyo has no way of knowing whether Tetris will get lucky garbage, the only thing they can do is go for an 8+ kill chain. But if the Tetris player is aggressive enough, there's not enough space for a kill chain. Do you see the conundrum? [a href=\\\\\\\"https://twitter.com/S2LSOFTENER/status/859232537910157312\\\\\\\" target=\\\\\\\"_blank\\\\\\\"]https://twitter.com/S2LSOFTENER/status/859232537910157312[/a]
• Not only can Tetris harass like crazy, even combos are better than chains too lol [a href=\\\\\\\"https://clips.twitch.tv/SpotlessCautiousSpiderBigBrother\\\\\\\" target=\\\\\\\"_blank\\\\\\\"]https://clips.twitch.tv/SpotlessCautiousSpiderBigBrother[/a]

It is true that a lot of the unfairness in the Puyo VS Tetris "matchup" is a result of Puyo Puyo being too slow. Maybe enabling quick drop would help Puyo win more. But personally, I don't think that would make Puyo VS Tetris any more interesting than it is now. Whether quick drop is enabled for Puyo or not, the strategies players will follow are still the same. The Tetris player will still be attacking as fast as possible, which is the goal anyways regardless of whether Puyo has hard drop (actually it's also the goal in Tetris vs Tetris too). The Puyo player will still be praying they can make a nice dig chain, which merely has an increased probability of success with hard drop. There aren't any hype mind games going on here, just speed and praying. And that's why I say Puyo VS Tetris is "not fun".


2. A mixed 1v1 VS bracket would be filled with Tetris mirrors
Let me summarize the reasons why you can expect a VS bracket to be filled with Tetris mirrors:

• Since Puyo VS Tetris is super unbalanced in favor of Tetris, Puyo players are discouraged from playing unless they also know how to play Tetris.
• People in the Fighting Game Community live and breathe match-up discussions. It doesn't take much googling to find out which game is superior in VS rule. Actually, you don't even need to google: the worldwide top 20 in the Switch version of PPT consists of 19 Tetris players and one Puyo player; and you have free access to lots of high level replays right in the game's online replay viewer.
• More people know about Tetris than Puyo Puyo.

It is very, very likely that new competitive players will continue to play Tetris, or only play Tetris, because it's both familiar and the overpowered superior game mode anyway. Puyo won't get any representation at all, so the Puyo community won't see any growth from a VS bracket at EVO.


3. A mixed 1v1 VS bracket sets a bad precedent for future tournaments
This tournament is going to be at EVO, one of the largest competitive tournament gatherings in the world. What you do here will set a precedent that other people will try to follow at their locals. I think running a VS bracket would set a bad precedent because:

• We know Puyo VS Tetris is broken and boring, so it'd be kinda effed up for the EVO tournament to trick people into taking it seriously
• Watching everyone pick Tetris instead of Puyo goes against the spirit of the cross-over game.
• Official VS rule tournaments dissuade people from investing time into learning Puyo and that will be disastrous for the Puyo community.

4. Puyo Puyo Tetris has its own issues with Tetris vs Tetris
Take a look at this high level strat: https://clips.twitch.tv/AgileGiftedDeerEagleEye
This stalling is an unfortunate consequence of the lack of Garbage Blocking in Puyo Puyo Tetris.
Also, Puyo Puyo Tetris doesn't have a hurry up mechanic, so a single round can last up to five or ten minutes. This presents a huge logistical issue for the tournament if everyone ends up playing Tetris only.


5. Running a VS bracket siphons players away from the Swap bracket
You told us your logic behind running the VS bracket was that you didn't want to scare off "character specialists" who hadn't practiced one of Tetris or Puyo. Well you kind of already scared off the high level Puyo specialists because most of us don't want to deal with VS rule lol. Puyo players know that the matchup is super unfair, and if a strong Tetris player like Blink is confirmed to go to EVO, then the chances of wining are super slim (and still pretty slim even with hard drop). Puyo won't get any promotion, which, for the puyo community, kinda negates the worth of a costly trip to Las Vegas.

I really don't think you should care so much about "discouraging" or "scaring" off character specialists. This is EVO, where people evolve(!) -- learn -- through competition. What is so wrong with getting people to learn a puzzle game they're not familiar with? If they've been keeping up with AnimEVO news, they should know that a Swap mode tournament is coming. They have time to practice Puyo Puyo.

And actually, are there even a significant amount of people who would get scared away from a swap mode tournament? Seems like the general gaming populace is OK with it; and in fact, many view it as the tournament standard. Swap mode has been run at PAX East, PAX South, in previous years at the Red Bull 5G,  conventions like Anime Weekend Atlanta, and more. For every rare person who doesn't want to learn a new puzzle games, there are several times more who are totally fine with learning Puyo Puyo or Tetris.

I think you have to realize here that, as the TO for the Puyo Puyo Tetris tournament at AnimEVO, you have the power to influence people. I think you should do what's best for both the Puyo Puyo and Tetris communities. If you give people an easy way out by offering VS rule, that's probably what they'll do. But if you push hard for Swap mode by making it the main event, people will be pushed to learn both Puyo Puyo AND Tetris. And that's what we all want.


6. Not only is Swap mode highly strategic, it also fixes some problems with Tetris vs Tetris in PPT
Garbage Blocking is enabled for Tetris in Swap mode. This nerfs combos because you can't accept free lines mid-combo for free damage. And if you do try to stall, you might lock yourself into damage on the Puyo side.

There are many other things, like knowing when to use your Puyo chain and how to time the "Swap combo bonus" that make Swap mode super hype and strategic.

Here is a video that explains high level swap mode tricks:

And here is high level Swap mode matches between players who are good at both Puyo Puyo AND Tetris.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SJqjMBhr80...u.be&t=7505

Swap Mode is amazing, and it would suck if it has a small bracket because of a VS bracket siphoning away players.

[Blink]

I don't see any problem with hosting both tournaments.  How would a VS mode siphon away players from the Swap tournament if they're hosted on separate days?

I understand that Puyo vs Tetris can be an unfair matchup at the highest skill levels, but disagree that Swap mode should be the standard for all future tournaments.  The problem is the game balance between Puyo and Tetris, not the idea of Versus mode itself.  If Puyo was the OP game, I would still prefer to play Versus mode for tournaments rather than Swap.  My own preference is the 2v2 P+T vs P+T which eliminates the game balance problem and keeps it pure versus.

Which brings me to the next point, SEGA will be there and the tournament will have exposure. This is the perfect opportunity to show any flaws in the balance early on and bring to light any strategies that might be OP (4wide or combos in general) so that the developers can see and hopefully adjust the game balance.  I prefer that over us enforcing some of our own untested balance changes like changing the drop speed of puyos (which I think is imbalanced because I pretty much instant-die when I don't interrupt a skilled Puyo player's chain early on).  I feel like this Swap-only proposal for tournaments is a message to SEGA that the game is fine as is and we're happy with this mode for tournaments, which is not true.

With an NA audience and userbase for this tournament, it's safe to say the majority of potential participants are coming from a Tetris-only background.  By enforcing a Swap only ruleset, I can see some of these players being deterred or limiting our amount of entrants.  Who would want to play on a game they're not familiar with in front of a bunch of watching eyes?

Organizing a tournament like this is difficult and there is no situation where everyone will be happy. I think that's why Kiyobi had to settle on 2 seperate tourneys when he initially only wanted to host on Versus mode.  I still don't know why hosting a tournament on both modes is such a big issue.

[Kiyobi]

@S2: It was late and I could not recall any of the specific points, forgive me

-

Each bracket would have their own separate entry and pots, so maybe someone would only want to put $5 for one mode and not for the other?

Also another reason why I'm bringing this up now is the very unpredictable length of the Tetris mirror in PPT. I've brought it up with the other AnimEVO tourneys and the concern of getting other AnimEVO brackets came up.
Of course, this is running on the assumption that people will cross over into other games, which I would find totally plausible.

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]Which brings me to the next point, SEGA will be there and the tournament will have exposure. This is the perfect opportunity to show any flaws in the balance early on and bring to light any strategies that might be OP (4wide or combos in general) so that the developers can see and hopefully adjust the game balance.[/quote]

I have major doubts about this, as much as I hate to admit it.

Sega never patched Puyo Tetris Vanilla with balance changes. The balance changes only came with the release of the PS4/XB1 versions, and that weren't even announced, just stealthily inserted into the release. (Unless I totally missed that news.)

[S2PID]

[!--quoteo--][div class=\\\'quotetop\\\']QUOTE[/div][div class=\\\'quotemain\\\'][!--quotec--]
I don't see any problem with hosting both tournaments.  How would a VS mode siphon away players from the Swap tournament if they're hosted on separate days?
[/quote]
Presumably you will have to pay a registration fee for each bracket and if money is involved, people will probably not go outside their comfort zone.
EDIT: kiyobi said in the above post that you do.

I understand that Puyo vs Tetris can be an unfair matchup at the highest skill levels, but disagree that Swap mode should be the standard for all future tournaments.  The problem is the game balance between Puyo and Tetris, not the idea of Versus mode itself.

well yeah if there were two brackets Tetris VS Tetris and Puyo VS Puyo, then that would be fine. But this is a mixed VS bracket. This discussion goes farther back then kiyobi's above post. The apparent reasoning behind not doing Tetris only or Puyo only brackets is that it would require too much manpower and there's suspicions that no one will sign up for Puyo. Kiyobi believes doing Mixed VS would bring in the biggest crowd but that's not necessarily the case.

My own preference is the 2v2 P+T vs P+T which eliminates the game balance problem and keeps it pure versus.

Have you tried this yourself against top level Japanese players? I did the other day and it sort of made me realize that SEGA & Red Bull probably just do the 2v2 teams for PR purposes, not because it's actually balanced in a good way. Teams in PPT are weird in that damage isn't split across both of your targets. Since both opponents receive full damage, this puts an extreme emphasis on being the first attacker since you're effectively doing x2 damage on offense... in other words, most of the work relies on the Tetris partner being ultra-fast (which is the goal anyway) while Puyo is fumbling around garbage as usual.

My suspicion is that for the Red Bull 5G 2015, the most iconic players of the Japanese Puyo and Tetris communities had a hard time qualifying in the Swap mode tournament. Therefore, in 2016, Red Bull ran Puyo-only and Tetris-only qualifiers instead, and only did the team battle in the finals so it could look hype.

fwiw most of the Japanese tournaments seem to be Puyo-only, Tetris-only, and Swap. They try to run all three brackets.

Which brings me to the next point, SEGA will be there and the tournament will have exposure. This is the perfect opportunity to show any flaws in the balance early on and bring to light any strategies that might be OP (4wide or combos in general) so that the developers can see and hopefully adjust the game balance.

Unfortunately, I think SEGA's priority is to ensure that Puyo VS Tetris is balanced at a casual level. It's been like this for three years  and they haven't bothered to change things. Can they change things? We don't know how much the TTC is deciding about the combo tables and the garbage system, which I would say are the main forms of imbalance in Puyo vs Tetris and Tetris vs Tetris.

I prefer that over us enforcing some of our own untested balance changes like changing the drop speed of puyos (which I think is imbalanced because I pretty much instant-die when I don't interrupt a skilled Puyo player's chain early on).  I feel like this Swap-only proposal for tournaments is a message to SEGA that the game is fine as is and we're happy with this mode for tournaments, which is not true.

Which statement is not true? That the game is fine as is, or that we're happy with Swap mode as tournaments? Mixed VS isn't fine as I said earlier but Swap mode is great so I'd be OK with it for tournaments. How much you have tried swap mode before?

With an NA audience and userbase for this tournament, it's safe to say the majority of potential participants are coming from a Tetris-only background.  By enforcing a Swap only ruleset, I can see some of these players being deterred or limiting our amount of entrants.  Who would want to play on a game they're not familiar with in front of a bunch of watching eyes?

I think more than you'd expect:


32+ people, on the spot, before the game was even released in English seems like a good number to me.

[Blink]

Presumably you will have to pay a registration fee for each bracket and if money is involved, people will probably not go outside their comfort zone.
EDIT: kiyobi said in the above post that you do.

Registration fee.... what's that.. $5?  $10 tops?  What quality of players are being siphoned off if $10 is stopping them from competing in both tournaments?
Now imagine registration fee + hotel costs + flight for any top Tetris /Puyo - only players not living in Vegas who have to travel.  Especially at EVO of all tournaments, where we want to highlight the best talent, we want to avoid having people sit this one out.
We want to avoid a situation where spectators are unimpressed by players they think they can beat.

well yeah if there were two brackets Tetris VS Tetris and Puyo VS Puyo, then that would be fine. But this is a mixed VS bracket. This discussion goes farther back then kiyobi's above post. The apparent reasoning behind not doing Tetris only or Puyo only brackets is that it would require too much manpower and there's suspicions that no one will sign up for Puyo. Kiyobi believes doing Mixed VS would bring in the biggest crowd but that's not necessarily the case.

The tournament hasn't even been hosted yet, there's no telling how many players it could bring in.  We're not even giving it a chance.

Have you tried this yourself against top level Japanese players? I did the other day and it sort of made me realize that SEGA & Red Bull probably just do the 2v2 teams for PR purposes, not because it's actually balanced in a good way. Teams in PPT are weird in that damage isn't split across both of your targets. Since both opponents receive full damage, this puts an extreme emphasis on being the first attacker since you're effectively doing x2 damage on offense... in other words, most of the work relies on the Tetris partner being ultra-fast (which is the goal anyway) while Puyo is fumbling around garbage as usual.

My suspicion is that for the Red Bull 5G 2015, the most iconic players of the Japanese Puyo and Tetris communities had a hard time qualifying in the Swap mode tournament. Therefore, in 2016, Red Bull ran Puyo-only and Tetris-only qualifiers instead, and only did the team battle in the finals so it could look hype.

fwiw most of the Japanese tournaments seem to be Puyo-only, Tetris-only, and Swap. They try to run all three brackets.

I'll admit I haven't played much 2v2.  That being said, the concept sounds fair between both teams and is a way of incorporating a mix of games in Versus.   Those finals were exciting and are one of the reasons I'm playing PPT now rather than just staying on Tetris Friends.  I disagree with Puyo being ineffective in this mode, from what I saw there was a round where hebo lost early and his Puyo partner almost won the round 2v1.

Unfortunately, I think SEGA's priority is to ensure that Puyo VS Tetris is balanced at a casual level. It's been like this for three years  and they haven't bothered to change things. Can they change things? We don't know how much the TTC is deciding about the combo tables and the garbage system, which I would say are the main forms of imbalance in Puyo vs Tetris and Tetris vs Tetris.

It's possible they don't know about the balance issues at higher competitive play or haven't heard enough complaints about it.  I think seeing it first hand is a strong way of sending a message.  

Which statement is not true? That the game is fine as is, or that we're happy with Swap mode as tournaments? Mixed VS isn't fine as I said earlier but Swap mode is great so I'd be OK with it for tournaments. How much you have tried swap mode before?

Both.  I've tried Swap.  If it becomes the tournament standard the winner would be the best Swap player.  Not the best Tetris player and not the best Puyo player, and not even necessarily the best that can play both as Swap has small differences that set it apart from Versus on either game.

I think more than you'd expect:

32+ people, on the spot, before the game was even released in English seems like a good number to me.

I actually know the runner up at this event and spoke to him about his experience.  He just happened to be at PAX without prior knowledge of the tournament. The game mode was not made clear to him before the event, he entered because the organizers were asking people/egging people on in the PAX crowd if they dared to enter a Puyo Tetris tournament.  That helps with filling a bracket, and still doesn't tell us if a versus tournament would garner more attention.  The fact that the game hadn't been released in English yet makes me believe that the "Swap" mode choice here didn't play a role at all in the amount of participants.

This is one of those situations where the participants weren't familiar with the mode so it was possible to gather 32 people on the spot for Big Bang mode with a crowd this large and using the same type of methods, especially if there's no fee.

1) Would you be happy with the level of skill displayed at the PAX tournament for this upcoming EVO?
2) Do you know of anyone who came out to this event specifically to compete in this tournament?

[CH4F]

Once again, I thank Kiyobi to host PPT at AnimEVO. It'll be important for both Puyo and Tetris scene. I also thank him to take his time to talk directly with the community. More TOs should do this.

This topic is very interesting. I wanna be TO too and this topic already helped me on how should we handle tourneys in PPT. I'm still sure, this game will be the true start of local competitive greatness in both communities. S2, Kiyobi and Blink already described a big chunk of the topic.

The match format Kiyobi described, FT2 matches of FT2 rounds, isn't optimal, but it's the best solution we could've found to make a true tourney match format in PPT. The game still doesn't let us set more than 3 winning rounds on one match which is both dumb and unjustified. Can we agree right now that FT5 (FT7 for Puyo high-level matches) is the best match format a PPT tourney could have?

On all the matchup concerns, the biggest problem is easy to see. In this game, Puyo VS Tetris is Tsu VS Guidelines. Add anything more on Tsu, like Hard Drop, and it's not Tsu anymore. Remove anyfing from Guidelines, like Hold, and it's not Guidelines anymore. I'm not against, but I don't wanna throw off Puyo players on a rule they're not used to, just because I think it'll "fix the matchup".

So, I'd like to ask you guys, would you still enter if I dropped Versus and ran only Swap for AnimEVO? Is being forced to play Puyo Puyo enough of a deterrent to keep you from entering?

Like I said on Reddit, Swap restricts and intimidate the players.
For me, if you wanna do 2 tourneys, the best choice is to do PvP and TvT. Maybe some exhibition matches with PTvPT. Swap is totally and at 100% a competitive mode and it shouldn't be banned. But while the game has 3 years in Japan, here, it will begin its 4th week. It's way too soon to eforcee both Guidelines and Tsu players to learn Tsu and Guidelines. Maybe later, but even later, Swap should not be the main competitive rule in PPT. PvP and TvT, should. Then Swap and Doubles.

4. Puyo Puyo Tetris has its own issues with Tetris vs Tetris

To this day, I don't know a single Tetris game, especially a Guideline one, that doesn't have any flaws in its multiplayer gameplay. To go even beyond that, I don't know a single competitive puzzle game rule that matches Tsu's balance and depth.
It's really hard to argue with this statement, because to this day, Tetris VS Tetris in PPT is the best 1v1 Tetris game we have.
- Its limited game speed in general (longer line clears, ARE...), that makes high-level play way more strategy and timing based than Tetris Friends or Tetris Online Poland, that are 2 super speedy games.
- The "Puyo-like" ways of giving damage, that stops to 8 lines instead of dumping everything the player has on its buffer.
- All the audio-cues, with spells and SFX, that helps players knowing what's going on precisely, without wasting time looking too much at what the opponent is doing.

If we point out the flaws, what else do we have? Should we ban Tetris? Go full Tsu? It's far from being faultless, but you can't point out a particular (and fun) thing and claim that "high-level meta looks like that, now". Or else, everybody would have stopped playing Guidelines after that sort of nonsense in Tetris Battle.
You are the head of the western Puyo community. Easily the most known western Puyo player out there, with maybe Shiro. Of course you wanna protect it and sublime it. But if we could have TTOs with the best of the best at a game as flawed on the direct competitive side that TF, just imagine what the Guidelines community can do with PPT.

Kiyobi's concerns about "the very unpredictable length of the Tetris mirror in PPT." my only and major concern about TvT. It's super hard, because during online tourneys, you don't care. Both players have all the time of the world, it's FT15. In a tourney, that's totally another story. I'm upset about a lot of things in PPT, but the fact that it doesn't have any ways to time-limit a match... ugh...

I have major doubts about this, as much as I hate to admit it.

Sega never patched Puyo Tetris Vanilla with balance changes. The balance changes only came with the release of the PS4/XB1 versions, and that weren't even announced, just stealthily inserted into the release. (Unless I totally missed that news.)

I will nuance it.
- PPT was made with the western public in mind. Tetris would help reintroducing Puyo with the western world. The 'True' begining is here, not 3 years ago.
- The PS4 version was patched, to match the changes they did in the Switch version. So they can patch it again.
- When there's major problems in a game, it's not like the japanese people are the first to yell about it. We, on the other hand, LOVE to yell. Maybe, with enough yelling and thanks to the extra money the port will give to SEGA, they'll hear us. My hopes are super high, and it's a long shot, but it's still possible.
https://twitter.com/ARC_Chaf/status/819875349836296193

[Kiyobi]

The 2/3, 2/3 ruleset is a bit of a remnant from all my time involved with tournaments in fighting games. That's the standard there, and it's what I just happened to default to. I'm quite set on this, as doing a FT5 (for example) would most likely cause confusion among players, TOs, and any streamers that will broadcast our game.

A number of people have suggested I do PvP and TvT brackets, but I really want to push the mashup part of Puyo Puyo Tetris a lot. I'm aware I'm biased.

As for your opinion about Quick Drop, I'm aware that it breaks traditional Tsu play. Consider that this is going to be mostly a Western audience, who is very likely to know about Tetris over Puyo, and in turn, familiar with hard dropping. Even though this change would be a convention breaker, I feel it would not be one that would feel negligibly foreign.

[CH4F]

The 2/3, 2/3 ruleset is a bit of a remnant from all my time involved with tournaments in fighting games. That's the standard there, and it's what I just happened to default to. I'm quite set on this, as doing a FT5 (for example) would most likely cause confusion among players, TOs, and any streamers that will broadcast our game.

I know. I'm an active FGC member and I know your role in WNF. I was talking about an FT5, ONLY if the game allows it. On actual PPT, it's out of question. We need to see the "win/lose" clearly on stream. The most frustrating part for me is that Sonic Team, for their next game, Puyo Puyo Chronicles, allows the players to create local and online matches of FT100, if they want. FT30 is the usual format. And the game came after PPT, so they clearly saw they did a mistake and they know it. Nothing was made to fix this.

A number of people have suggested I do PvP and TvT brackets, but I really want to push the mashup part of Puyo Puyo Tetris a lot. I'm aware I'm biased.

No, you're not. You're just paying respects to the entire concept of the game. I'm the first to be truly sad about how the matchup turned crap. I wanted PvT action in tourney. I wanted the fact that Puyo had to play differently, as well as Tetris. That's how matchup works, right? Turns out that Tetris can just play Tetris while Puyo will drown in ojamas. And I hate that. PPT is a ballzy idea, but poorly made. The more I see Hosoyamada (the Producer of Puyo) talking about the game, the more I think he has the same score in my give-a-crap-o-meter as Ono.

- "We have contacted top notch Puyo pro players to help us balance the game between Puyo and Tetris."
- "Have you contacted actual Tetris Guidelines players as well ?"
- "Hm..."
https://twitter.com/hebo_MAI/status/382484998319640578

As for your opinion about Quick Drop, I'm aware that it breaks traditional Tsu play. Consider that this is going to be mostly a Western audience, who is very likely to know about Tetris over Puyo, and in turn, familiar with hard dropping. Even though this change would be a convention breaker, I feel it would not be one that would feel negligibly foreign.

Weird arguing. It's like I'm TOing GGXrd in an anime convention when players don't know fighting games that well and I go: "Stylish only, guys. Well, yeah. You're all newbies, so everyone has to play the newbie mode."

What about the "authenticity"? What about the Tsu players? I'm agree to let them the choice and only on PvT matchup, but HD shouldn't be in Tsu, IMO. Puyo 7 rules has HD and it didn't turn out well.

[owo]

Background: I have run Puyo tournaments on Puyo Nexus for three years and counting.

Kiyobi, what do you believe the overarching goal behind this tournament should be? To challenge Puyo and Tetris players to at their respective highest levels of play, or to make players more willing to enter the tournament? There's also the closely related PR versions of these targets: To demonstrate to spectators Puyo and Tetris at their highest levels of play, or to make spectators more eager to join these communities?

Under normal circumstances, the former goal naturally leads into the latter. People enter tournaments because they believe they are the best (or want to be the best, like no one ever was), and pro-level tournaments draw in eyeballs to the game that would not normally be fixated on it.

However, due to the imbalance in the PvT matchup, these goals now actually conflict with each other. Puyo players must play sub-optimally in order to keep up with Tetris (and let's not talk about what has to happen for Puyo to win the matchup), and the normal footsies-like gameplay that makes Puyo such a competitive puzzle fighter is entirely absent. Giving Puyo access to quick drop only exacerbates the issue.

Do you truly believe the TvP matchup creates compelling and desirable gameplay situations? All I ever hear are Puyo players complaining about the overwhelming DPS of Tetris, or Tetris complaining about the exponential damage curve of Puyo, how much players of both games hate the mixed format, and very little about how mixed VS is actually pretty dope. On the other hand, I hear nothing but praise for Swap mode as the most entertaining mixed mode in PPT.

Swap mode isn't without its own issues either, as the obscene power of the Swap Combo Bonus warps traditional gameplans in vanilla Puyo and Tetris. However, forcing players to be proficient in both game modes simultaneously as well as the importance of Swap Combos leads to unique, meaningful gameplay not normally present in Puyo and Tetris. If what you want is a format that wouldn't be possible from each franchise individually yet leads to hype moments, Swap is the superior format, not mixed VS.

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If you truly want to run a mixed VS bracket, I have experimented with formats that try to equalize the differences between Puyo and Tetris. Here's two examples:

Round 1: Player A (Puyo) VS Player B (Tetris)
Round 2: Player A (Tetris) VS Player B (Puyo)
Round 3: Only occurs if different players win R1 and R2. Format becomes either PvP or TvT, depending on the outcomes of R1 and R2.

Round 1: Player A (Puyo) VS Player B (Puyo)
Round 2: Player A (Tetris) VS Player B (Tetris)
Round 3: Only occurs if different players win R1 and R2. Format becomes either PvT or TvP, depending on the outcomes of R1 and R2.

There are various pros and cons of the variants in these formats that you can theorycraft up if you wish. I wasn't able to get decisive information about which of them are better when I ran a few test brackets with players, unfortunately.

[owo]

Oh, there is one potential way to deal with the logistical issue of Tetris matches taking a long time to complete -- have a 3P match with one player set to Puyo, which turns on the margin time mechanic which acts as a "sudden death" after some amount of time has passed. The Puyo player immediately suicides and lets the two Tetris players continue as normal.

There are significant drawbacks to doing this, though: the first is the 3P/4P UI, which is extremely cramped and changes the direction of the preview window. Another is the appearance of the combo rush mechanic when a Puyo player is involved. Not sure what you guys think of that.

[Blink]

Oh, there is one potential way to deal with the logistical issue of Tetris matches taking a long time to complete -- have a 3P match with one player set to Puyo, which turns on the margin time mechanic which acts as a "sudden death" after some amount of time has passed. The Puyo player immediately suicides and lets the two Tetris players continue as normal.

There are significant drawbacks to doing this, though: the first is the 3P/4P UI, which is extremely cramped and changes the direction of the preview window. Another is the appearance of the combo rush mechanic when a Puyo player is involved. Not sure what you guys think of that.

Never thought about this, that's a clever solution.  I don't know if it's worth the smaller field and weird preview location but it sounds better than what I was thinking:
At the cutoff time limit the game stops (TO hits pause or something), and then whoever has the lowest field height wins.  Spectators would probably boo when the pause happens, considering it's a close/intense game if it's been going on this long.

Have long games been an issue in the past?  It's rare in my experience to have a game last over 5 minutes, less than 10%.

[jackh1771]

Please keep Versus I plan to come out from Ohio to play tetris

Long tvt games aren't a problem, they are intense and exciting for the spectators and players.  They show off the best parts of the skill in timing and blocking attacks.

We should show off the best tetris and puyo players. I think the swap grand finals will be far less exciting for spectators than the grand finals for versus.

Seems like the puyo players are here just to hate on tetris. Run swap and versus or if we can do pvp tvt and swap but dont get rid of normal tetris. Most western spectators are clicking the stream to watch tetris anyways. I would play in swap and versus but i wouldnt come to just play swap.

[Kiyobi]

@owo
I'm probably a little out of line when I say this, as a low level Puyo player, but I'm assuming that those who complain just aren't willing to play the Tetris matchup.

I do like the your ideas of the Versus bracket formats though, I'll have to think on those formats.

@jackh1771
Long TvT games are hype for players and spectators, but are a problem for the tourney organizers.

Consider the repercussions if a competitor was entered in another event. They'd wind up holding up the bracket because their single match took ~20 minutes. Put that next to a typical fighting game set, which would last less than 10 minutes average, and it just feels, rude.

[iljain]

fighting games of EVO is too short, bo3 is just short, like street fighter

a lot of players say it's too short to tell if the winner of bo3 of street fighter is stronger or not.

about tetris, watch bo3 or bo5 of TvT games on youtube, they aren't that long. or maybe they are, but I don't think bo3 takes 20min, perhaps 10.