Official Puyo Puyo Tetris @ AnimEVO Discussion Thread

[Sixfortyfive]

EDIT: Dammit, why don't the quote tags work?

Just going to chime in here even though I've said a lot of this in discord previously; it'd be nice to have it in writing on a forum.

When evaluating 1v1 mixed VS from the perspective of a fighting game player (which is kind of relevant when we're talking about EVO), you can sort of treat the two selectable puzzle games as different "characters" with match-up specific strategies, where the proper tactics for a PvT match can be quite different from those of a TvT or PvP "mirror match," forcing you to play either game in different ways depending on which game that your opponent selected. Being a fighting game player myself, this is honestly kind of intriguing to me and not something that I dismiss outright; I do think there's some value in that concept. I just don't think it works well when there's only 2 different "characters" to pick from. Maybe if this game wasn't just Puyo Puyo and Tetris, but something with more selectable puzzle games where a true counterpick wheel could develop from multiple selectable games that each had their own strengths/weaknesses/counters, then the concept would be more appealing. But you don't really get that when there's just a binary choice, and there's not much strategic depth to be found through the game choice as a result. At low to mid level PvT, Puyo buries Tetris because a 5-chain stairs combo just obliterates someone whose only skill is slowly stacking for tetrises. At high to top level, Puyo can't keep up with Tetris's speed without some particularly favorable RNG.

Which leads me to this:

owo: "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."

This is also important. I find PvT at least intriguing in theory because I like Puyo, I like Tetris, and I like the concept of playing each component game differently based on the match-up. But what do you think the average mixed VS participant would think? The average player who enters the VS bracket but not the Swap bracket would be doing so because he only feels comfortable with one of the two games (Tetris in most cases). So, when a player like this is forced to play against Puyo in bracket when not only does he not know TvP match-up specific strategies, but he doesn't even really know Puyo as a game at all, he's going to have the same gut reaction as every unskilled streamer has when this happens to them on ranked online matches: "Hurrr Puyo is bullshit durrr why can't I just filter to TvT?"

Regarding the suggestion of permitting Quick Drop (Hard Drop) for Puyo: Like I said before, it would really sour the whole experience if a Puyo player happened to squeak by a Tetris player in tournament just barely because of a non-standard crutch like this. That is not at all fair to the Tetris player. It would also screw up PvP matches a bit because it significantly changes the dynamic of countering a chain in-progress; Quick Drop is non-standard for a reason. Rule changes of this magnitude should stay quarantined to the Smash Bros community. No need to spread around that kind of stink elsewhere. Play the game you have, not the game you wished you had.

Blink: "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."

Let's be real here: Sega doesn't even make balance changes based on top-level tournaments specifically focusing on this game in Japan, such as the Red Bull 5G. So, they sure as hell aren't going to make balance changes based off of a side-tournament populated by EVO attendees who don't even train seriously for this particular game in the first place.

CH4F: "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."

I don't think the "too early" argument holds much merit when both of these games are decades old and PPT brackets at every FGC tournament I've been to in the past 2 years that have featured the game in some capacity have run Swap mode as the tournament format. TOs weren't scared to focus on Swap when this was a super-niche import-only title. Why the cold feet now? (I mean, I'm pretty sure that I know why, but I'll get to that in a minute.)

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."

Using a 3P Puyo player to introduce Margin Time into TvT matches is kind of interesting, but I'm against it for the same reasons you brought up: the UI is terrible and the deviation from guideline rules isn't necessarily desirable. It's also another logistical hassle; since TvT mirrors are bound to be common, you'd have to find volunteers and controllers that are dedicated to be the dummy 3P in every match.

A hard time-limit manually enforced by a ref would be better, though still undesirable and prone to its own logistical issues. And speaking of time limits:

jackh1771: "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."

Long matches are absolutely an issue when you're trying to coordinate with an event as huge as EVO and you can't keep players wrapped up too long in one game when they might be needed for a match in another game. Fighting games avoid this issue by having a hard built-in time limit for their matches. Puyo handles this issue somewhat by having a Margin Time mechanic that gradually increases attack strength so that basic scrub chains eventually become OHKOs once a round drags on too long. Tetris doesn't really have a built-in solution, and while high-level Tetris usually doesn't drag too long, a failsafe rule is probably necessary to keep low-level Tetris matches between equally skilled scrubs from dragging on for an eternity. And you're going to have a lot of low-level matches since this isn't going to be a playerbase full of Guideline Tetris experts.

Kiyobi's suggestion of 2/3 games per match (3/5 for finals) makes the most sense for the EVO crowd, since that's the common format for the other games at the tournament. There might be some merit in discussing whether each game should be 2/3 rounds per game or 3/5 rounds per game, though. Time permitting, of course.

Blink: "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."

Isn't that kind of the point, though? A Puyo Puyo Tetris tournament shouldn't necessarily crown the best Puyo player, or the best Tetris player, but the best Puyo Puyo Tetris player. And if there's one single game mode that encompasses the most of PPT, it's Swap mode.

Kiyobi: "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'm going to be cynical here and suggest that this post is projection. The most transparent reason to push for a 1v1 VS bracket in the first place is to give Tetris specialists an excuse to not actually have to learn how to play the other half of Puyo Puyo Tetris. I'd go so far as to say that pushing for the 1v1 VS format is to not run a Puyo Puyo Tetris tournament at all, but rather a Tetris tournament with some Puyo pushed off to the side. The existence of a mixed VS bracket siphons away some entrants from Swap by giving Tetris-only players the option to ignore it.

And I'm not even saying that that's the worst thing in the world or anything. Running a Tetris tournament via PPT is harmless in itself; it's a perfectly competent iteration of Guideline Tetris on current-gen hardware. I'm not going to pick up my ball and go home, whining that you might as well run an older Tetris game instead of PPT if you're not equally interested in the PP side of the game. No one should be forced to run Tetris Ultimate. (Is that game still a dumpster fire, btw?)

But I do think it'd be kind of unfortunate to de-emphasize the very crossover nature of this game when that's the entire thing that makes it a uniquely great experience in the first place.

[owo]

@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.

Of course we're unwilling to play the matchup, Mixed VS warps the yomi and risk/reward normally present in competitive Puyo into a single-minded grind of dig chain hell. That's something that balance changes will never address without significantly warping the essence of either game.

To reiterate: Mixed VS adds nothing to either franchise asides from warm fuzzies about having a puzzle crossover mashup, and even worse, removes depth from Puyo. Again, I ask you what exactly you believe the overarching impact of the side tourney should be, and whether Mixed VS is the best way to accomplish that mission.

Not every Tetris player believes Swap mode has a chilling effect on the expression of game mastery. I too used to believe Mixed VS was the best format to push the mashup aspect of the game, but things like that eventually convinced me otherwise.

[CH4F]

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.

Exactly my thoughts. I'd say even more. Technically, SF has 2 winning rounds on 2 winning games. In Tetris or Puyo Puyo, you don't have any meters per rounds or some things that makes you separate the rounds. So you can go FT5. Directly. Even allow FT7 on top 8 or just the finals, just like the FGC does in Street Fighter, when the matches are BO5 in finals.

But there's a thing that we don't count when we say this. Low/Mid level matches can be insanely long in Tetris. A simple BO3 can last way more than 10 min, when both players can't go for the kill as easily as high level players. This isn't a problem in most of the fighting games, because even if you don't combo, if you can touch your opponent like, what, 10 times with big hit? You'll kill him without having to learn combos, spacing, timing and everything you need to learn to do well in fighting games tourneys.

This is exactly why I keep saying "Tetris desperately needs a time-out mechanic". We need something to kill the players if the players can't kill eachother. This is also why I don't like the Margin Time as a time-out mechanic.

When evaluating 1v1 mixed VS from the perspective of a fighting game player (which is kind of relevant when we're talking about EVO), you can sort of treat the two selectable puzzle games as different "characters" with match-up specific strategies, where the proper tactics for a PvT match can be quite different from those of a TvT or PvP "mirror match," forcing you to play either game in different ways depending on which game that your opponent selected. Being a fighting game player myself, this is honestly kind of intriguing to me and not something that I dismiss outright; I do think there's some value in that concept. I just don't think it works well when there's only 2 different "characters" to pick from. Maybe if this game wasn't just Puyo Puyo and Tetris, but something with more selectable puzzle games where a true counterpick wheel could develop from multiple selectable games that each had their own strengths/weaknesses/counters, then the concept would be more appealing. But you don't really get that when there's just a binary choice, and there's not much strategic depth to be found through the game choice as a result. At low to mid level PvT, Puyo buries Tetris because a 5-chain stairs combo just obliterates someone whose only skill is slowly stacking for tetrises. At high to top level, Puyo can't keep up with Tetris's speed without some particularly favorable RNG.

That's exactly what was my thought process in 2014, when I saw the game. The real problem is that Sonic Team just keeped both games the same. Tsu is still Tsu, Guidelines are still Guidelines. Now, we know that the matchup Guidelines VS Tsu is hell for Tsu.

It's not like "nobody wanna fight against the matchup they don't know", it's more like how many changes players can accept to correctly balance the matchup? You're sure Tsu players will love having Hard Drop or some 3/4 puyo seed Fever-style? You're sure Guidelines players will love having another randomizer that the 7-bag or having bonus on all-spins?

The fighting game aspect works, but the real comparison of this situation would have to pick Ryu from SFV and Sol from GGXrd, them let them fight with the exact same gameplay they have in their own game. How fucked a Ryu main will be?

I don't think the "too early" argument holds much merit when both of these games are decades old and PPT brackets at every FGC tournament I've been to in the past 2 years that have featured the game in some capacity have run Swap mode as the tournament format.

Well, the age of those games still works for my arguing. Don't mix up the time of release with the time of international competition on both of those games. It's like saying SFV is 30yo. SF is, not the last game of the series. Same deal on Puyo and Tetris. By the way, even if the Tsu and Guidelines high-players has little to no adaptation to do from their original games, Swap is an entire other deal for the players that doesn't know one of the game. Especially in the western community of both games.

The age factor helps a lot my wish of putting mirror matches on top. Because neither Puyo nor Tetris has the exposition they have now with PPT. It's maybe their only chances to do true Guidelines/Tsu high level matchups on a main stage.

[CH4F]

■■

[CH4F]

TOs weren't scared to focus on Swap when this was a super-niche import-only title. Why the cold feet now? (I mean, I'm pretty sure that I know why, but I'll get to that in a minute.)

Because FGC TOs never knew we existed before this game. Here's a tweet from ElvenShadow, which I have a lot of respect, being a strong Faust player in the US, asking a very awkard and kinda vexing question, for me.

PPT is saw as a fun party game. Not as a deep and serious competitive game like the fighting game genre has. We're Bomberman-tier for them. "I mean, Tetris is serious stuff, I saw the Grand Master thing in a GDQ or something. But tournaments? Strategies? Commentaries? This ain't an eSport, man. C'mon!"

Of course, we're treated awfully. It's kinda like the small tournaments of fighting games, organized by big malls, runned by people that has no idea how to handle a tournament. Single elimination, BO1. They don't know how to seed, they don't know the rules of a competitive match format. I seriously went in a 2 rounds, 150% Handicap, BO1 tournament on Tekken 6. Not because those TOs wanted us to suffer. They just has no idea how to handle something like that. And nobody says it, because we're all fortunate to have a tournament of this game anyway. We can't grunt on the TOs for that kind of "details".

For me, doing Swap, BO5 and double elim maybe works with an all-beginner tourney, but it doesn't work at all on an High Level / High Quality tourney. And it's the best sign to show that you don't have a clue of what you're doing as a TO for this game.

Isn't that kind of the point, though? A Puyo Puyo Tetris tournament shouldn't necessarily crown the best Puyo player, or the best Tetris player, but the best Puyo Puyo Tetris player. And if there's one single game mode that encapsulates the most of PPT, it's Swap mode. But I do think it'd be kind of unfortunate to de-emphasize the very crossover nature of this game when that's the entire thing that makes it a uniquely great experience in the first place.

I think you've missed out the point of this game. PPT isn't a cross-over game, it's a compilation. This isn't Marvel or any cross-over fighting games, when every characters kept their lore abilities, but they were normalized to fit into the game. Like I said, Tsu and Guidelines were practically untouched in VS mode. On the same arguing, we should push Fusion as the main competitive scene of the game.

(Is that game still a dumpster fire, btw?)

Still is. As a french, I'm ashamed about what Ubisoft has done.

[owo]

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.

From your own personal perspective (and not what you believe makes for a better spectacle), why wouldn't you come out to play Swap? If it's the fact that you only have like two months to learn Puyo before EVO, would you be less opposed to Swap being the headlining format 1+ year down the line?

Just to make it clear, I'm not opposed to running individual PvP and TvT brackets. In fact, I'd prefer that setup over mixed VS, for reasons already explained multiple times. Maybe have the winners and runners up of each bracket participate in a PTvPT exhibition match afterwards?

[CH4F]

Maybe have the winners and runners up of each bracket participate in a PTvPT exhibition match afterwards?

Exactly what we did with Bayoen, the french Puyo community, during the tournament to celebrate the game's release. Exactly what the RedBull 5G did, because the Osaka and Tokyo qualifiers was PvP and TvT.

For stream purposes, if Kiyobi has the time to run a streamed top 8, he should run 2 Top 4s and do one PTvPT exhibition matchup.

[flashman92]

So, when a player like this is forced to play against Puyo in bracket when not only does he not know TvP match-up specific strategies, but he doesn't even really know Puyo as a game at all, he's going to have the same gut reaction as every unskilled streamer has when this happens to them on ranked online matches: "Hurrr Puyo is bullshit durrr why can't I just filter to TvT?"

Honestly my worry is that since most people entering this are gonna be mid tier players, and Puyo players tend to beat Tetris players at this level really badly, this showcase is just gonna make the game look super unbalanced in Puyo's favor.

[CH4F]

Honestly my worry is that since most people entering this are gonna be mid tier players, and Puyo players tend to beat Tetris players at this level really badly, this showcase is just gonna make the game look super unbalanced in Puyo's favor.

It will. The FGC has no idea how Tetris Guidelines games are played.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqHT...XSz8YaVobBlL3or

[Kiyobi]

Honestly my worry is that since most people entering this are gonna be mid tier players, and Puyo players tend to beat Tetris players at this level really badly, this showcase is just gonna make the game look super unbalanced in Puyo's favor.

It will. The FGC has no idea how Tetris Guidelines games are played.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLqHT...XSz8YaVobBlL3or

Man, if I knew sooner that Frosty Faustings had a Tetris tournament, I would've flown out to get some free money.

Okay, so, I think I'm coming down to a final decision with regards to Versus at AnimEVO, but I'll give it tonight to let it boil over so I know I'm sure. Look forward tomorrow for an official announcement.

[Sixfortyfive]

A proposal, if there has to be more than just a Swap bracket:

- Two 1v1 VS brackets on Friday, one for each game.
- Anyone who places in the money for either bracket on Friday is obliged to pony up some of those winnings to enter the Swap bracket on Saturday.

That's a concession that I'd still rather not make because I feel it's still relegating Puyo to the sidelines, but at least this way anyone who's already made travel plans on the assumption that there will be a 1v1 VS bracket still gets to play his game of choice, but anyone who's hot shit has to actually play the whole game.

[Kiyobi]

Okay, it's official, I've decided to drop the mixed Versus bracket and will focus all my efforts on Swap.

This is Puyo Puyo Tetris, after all. Not a game that just happens to have Puyo Puyo and Tetris. After realizing this, I decided that Swap will be better.

[CH4F]

Okay, it's official, I've decided to drop the mixed Versus bracket and will focus all my efforts on Swap.

The format match? BO3 games of BO3 rounds? Just a BO5? Double Elimination? Small Round Robin groups? Seeds?

And to have my thoughts on it, I'm against it, but I'm glad PPT is at an EVO side tourney. It deserves its place and I hope the FGC on stream and at EVO will witness what high-level PPT looks like.

[flashman92]

Probably gonna be Bo3 Bo3

I really hope this doesn't turn off too many Tetris players from joining.

[CH4F]

Probably gonna be Bo3 Bo3

I really hope this doesn't turn off too many Tetris players from joining.

I think you're mixing up people that only knows Tetris and the Tetris players that wanna train Tetris. There's way less true Tetris players that wanna train Guideline on PPT than true Tsu players.

Now, guys, if you wanna make sure Puyo will be there, you'll have to move and show us. PPT will be the first game that could have a solid local competitive scene on both communities. We will have to learn what fighting games did 20 years ago: they did local tournaments all around the world. One tourney started in 2003, it was called "Evolution".

What I truly hope is that both communities could have their own big tourneys. I don't wanna do a tourney if I'm being forced to play Swap. What if I wanna focus on Guidelines? What about my Puyo friends that wanna focus on Tsu?