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- Playing with more than 2 players causes boards to become visually smaller than is even needed to fit them on-screen, creating notable visibility issues in Swap mode especially, even when dead players aren't covering boards with their characters (Zed, I know, overlaps)
- Multiple modes give you 4 Puyo colours only with no option to choose 5 like is the case in multiple standard Puyo rulesets (PP1 and a bunch of the RPGs for sure, but Puyo is already lacking in good handicap options for casual play)
- Colourblind options are non-existent, and the ones they added to PP Champions are still problematic, affecting the entire screen like was said in the doc already, and only giving preset, post-processing options (that don't address monochromacy) rather than something more dynamic like customizable skins for Puyos/Minos with more distinct silhouettes that get turned on per-player
- Puyo vs Tetris balancing is abysmal at almost all levels for a multitude of reasons. I have various potential fixes that I can't put into practice enough to make it worth pitching any of them to a company as obstinate as Sega, but the game sometimes feels unplayable as anything other than 1v1s of the same type with players of comparable skill
- Handicap settings are very lacking, both for extreme skill-gaps and in terms of how absurdly granular they are in modes like Swap (where only Sweet and Spicy are options for some reason). Tetris in particular suffers from the former problem, as better Tetris players often won't be put in situations where faster pieces even matter, and soft-drops into slides or SRS actually become BETTER in the early game
- Team Battles are implemented in a very underwhelming way, essentially JUST comparing damage output with no options for something like garbage negation between teammates (this is another situation where players of varying skill are SOL, especially egregious here because it's affecting teammates. Something like a "boss battle" against hard AI would be possible to set up without leaving novice teammates in the dust if interplay between teammates was possible)
- Keyboard controls on PC are buggy and arguably incomplete, sometimes completely breaking if guest controllers get unplugged before a game-reset, and lacking any support for "codes" like Unlocking Everything or activating Max-Difficulty CPUs
- Various features that are already in the game are extremely under-utilized, most notably Party Mode Items that could give us greater use of something like Pentaminos if they were available elsewhere. Other than that, support for more mixed modes like say... Swap vs Puyo/Tetris would be nice. Or even Party Mode with the ability to disable items for certain players.
- Lack of "Exercise Mode" or anything more casual that just lets players play the game together without direct competition. The closest the game has is Party Mode, which is FAR from relaxing in the way casual puzzle game fans expect from modes that are already in the game for solos like Marathon or Endless Puyo.
- Lack of Fever/Puyo 1/Classic Tetris rulesets. You can VAGUELY approximate parts of them by doing things like disabling Hold, but I'd hope PPT2 would have Fever at least, considering it's in Champions, and Fevers are in the game already within Big Bang-- including a brand new Tetris version of it that could be activated with garbage mitigation-- something Tetris' home series doesn't even HAVE and you can't disable as an option in VS
- Lack of per-player options for things like disabled/enabled piece Hold, Hard-Drop, Puyo/Mino skins, etc
- Sub-optimal localization. Complete changes in voice direction, small changes in dialogue throughout Adventure mode, and insistence on still using the names "Dark Prince" and "Puyo Underworld" for Satan and Puyo Hell
- Inability to preview various items from the shop. We get to see one isolated still of a Puyo/Mino-segment for skins, we get no Sound Test for alternate voices, etc
- Controller support is confusing to set up in Multiplayer (and sometimes singleplayer too), where we don't even get to see which controller is being selected with the same icon as we scroll through them, and for some reason we have no options to set players as P4 unless every slot before them is filled? I get that it's a minor complaint, but when playing with 3 Players, an empty yellow slot for P4 is on-screen at all times, player Teams are already themed with colours that don't affect borders for some reason, and all this compounds with issues like lack of colourblind options and the screen-crunch with 4 Players to be extra obnoxious
- Controller support is ass. Steam Big Picture can KIND OF help to mitigate this, but I still have working controllers I can't use in this game specifically, and the game's way of handling controllers is ARCHAIC by 2018 standards.
Probably a bunch of other stuff too that I can complain about later idk.
Thank you :)
What kills me about C4W in particular is that other Modern Tetris games already have solutions for this (combo damage cap, limited off-screen board space, etc). I get that Puyo's offense can be strong enough to require big counter-damage, but if you're a top-level Tetris pulling of 20-Combos with the GARBAGE THAT /HELPS/ YOU CONTINUE IT, you're always going to get the last laugh.
I feel bad just saying "destroy off-screen minos", even though I think it would be a good way of letting Puyo do real damage to god-Tetris, because I don't have an accompanying nerf for low-level Puyo. Considering the game already has changes that toggle on/off when fighting the opposite mode (like Tetris' way of storing combos until a non-combo drop before it sends any damage to Puyo, which also affects Tetris in FFAs with Puyo for some reason), I think it might also help to cap Puyo's damage in return?
Off the top of my head, I just think better handicap options would be the way to go. I'd also really like to see Puyo have to work with 5 colours by default. If we had both of these, you could encourage more skillful play with Puyos instead of randomly being handed 4-chains (or All-Clears LMAO) before a noobie Tetris can fix their first mis-drop, and you could give us Handicap settings that don't just drop starting garbage so strong Puyo players vs casuals don't just play the game of "oh man, more garbage to frustrate me, except if I get my chain off I still kill my friends effortlessly"-- because even if you get far enough to have Tetris bully Puyo in a casual let's-discover-the-game-together session, the game can feel remarkably frustrating, beyond just being tense, as you wait for Margin Time and hope Tetris doesn't downstack before you get good RNG.
Idk im rambling at this point
It's just a lot of things fundamental to the modes that need work-arounds that I just wish they would TRY to fix with 6 (six) years of hindsight, but at this point I have 0 faith in them bothering or pulling it off.
Nothing was stopping them from patching PPT for more than, like, a year-- and we could have gotten this all as options for players that wanted a static meta anyway.
edit: forgot to say, I'm still excited to see if PPT2 gameplay will be any good to me, happy release day y'all
The streamer I'm watching is a more casual fan and was asking about why Puyo has no hard-drop, and I honestly think that would start to help the speed issue of Puyo vs Tetris too, but this is just a really sad release from what I can see.
Like they have Leagues for misc, Puyo, Tetris, and the new "Skill Battle" mode, but they don't have one for the tournament-standard (since 2014) Swap mode???
I'd have put that on my wishlist if it weren't so insanely obvious-- you can still end up playing Swap Mode battles in misc queue like the opt-out system from PPT1 so I'm just really confused now
edit: in addition to the lack of of controller button config settings, I also find it weird that control-stick/pad users have no hard Drop sensitivity setting like is present in Tetris 99. It seems like a lot of people are having problems with accidental Hard-Drop inputs
Also please let this game's Elo system work quickly, pros are already ruining the "Beginner" option you can select for your starting rank
The games are fundamentally incompatible, continuing to mess with what can never be fixed will only cause more problems than it solves. Really even if you could get everyone to a 50% win rate, there's still the other problem that mixed completely redefines how Puyo players have to play in order to tank T-Spins while the other game doesn't need to change their strategy at all. Adding things to Puyo will only exacerbate that.
You seem quite stubborn. You have to think more about your own understanding of the game:
1) If the game were designed for casuals only, it would not have been so successful. Let me tell you something, even I didn't play the game that often, I still can feel myself improving. My own puzzle league rating also shows that. Puyo puyo and tetris are not that difficult (high school students can be very good or maybe the best players of these games). If a puzzle game lose its intellectual depth, I don't know what it is. Why not play frisbee or football instead?
2) I can easily refute your "fundamentally incompatible" argument. Actually for tetris players it's not that hard to enjoy the games against puyo puyo. It's a wholly different experience, first, the tetris player doesn't have to think too much about defense/safety. He/she just has to be aggressive (i.e. keeps b2b). Second, though combo is super easy for tetris, it doesn't take effect against puyo puyo. But, when there is a good chance to stack up and combo, it's fun to test if the puyo player is good enough to build his/her chain. For puyo players, it's also different between playing puyo opponent and tetris opponent (e.g. stack up one-sided, keeps harassing when tetris is in trouble). The problem of puyo puyo v.s. tetris is not the playability, the problem is the balance impacts the gameplay. This is actually not quite clear in 2014, because none of us are good enough to know that. But the balance problem 2 or 3 years afterwards we are quite sure about the balance problem, because we have marvelous puyo puyo player and tetris player there and when they play with each other, puyo puyo just lose. The ranking board also shows that.
Btw, do you even know puyo puyo v.s. puyo puyo and puyo you v.s. tetris are adapting different systems / tables?
https://harddrop.com/wiki/Puyo_Puyo_Tetris
Open up PPT1, go to the top of the leaderboards, count how many Puyo players are there. None, and it's been that way for the game's entire lifespan. That's your proof that these games are incompatible.
Puyo's a great game... when you play it against other Puyo players. That's all I want. I had to deal with mixed versus for about two years already. I do not like it. It is a completely different game from the game that I like, and making more changes will not help. I simply do not want to play it ever again. You cannot make me like it.
I'll just link Steelix's big post from 2017 because he's said everything I could say far better.[puyonexus.com] Three years later, nothing he's said has changed.
I think "limit off-screen minos" "combo damage cap" both make big change to the game. I have a much easier method to fix c4w, it is: JUST MAKE THE FIRST GARBAGE LINE A COMBO BREAKER!! The idea is really simple, for example, say c4w player just make 10 combos, the 11th line clear that include the first garbage line won't be a combo. Combo will start over after the line clear. Let me elaborate a bit why this is good:
1) This doesn't kill c4w, actually I think c4w still got the advantage in the opening. It will be an even game after the opening, slightly in favor of c4w player.
2) This doesn't violate guideline.
3) This is a really slight change to the game. The change can be even more harmless, by limiting the duration of the effect of combo breaker. For example, 1 minute after game start, the first garbage line can be used for combo.
4) Sega could just reserve the testing resource, because ppt1 players have been testing it for years! Just go search for the c4w games: more than 13 combos, the game belongs to c4w; 11-12 combos, the player against c4w is in big trouble even with perfect BTB opening played; under 10 combos, it's even. Even a perfect clear is made, c4w can still make it an even game (actually perfect clear opening is a bad choice against c4w on ppt1).
That's a long article that needs very much energy to write, and also argue. The author hates tetris so much that he even criticize modern tetris that he doesn't have to say anything about. I think if the balance problem is fixed, he won't hate tetris so much :) Will come back to this shortly.
One game gets garbage on the top, the other gets garbage on the bottom. One game is slow and methodical, the other is twitchy APM. One game wants to build up to a single decisive blow, the other fires rapid chip damage. One game puts a very high emphasis on screenwatching, the other makes it nearly irrelevant.
These are irreconcilable differences that cannot be solved by tweaking a few numbers.
Their personal thoughts on PPT2:
https://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1srgi08
The article is wrong in so many ways, let me restate a fact in the first place: puyo puyo and tetris have been balanced to some extent since 6 years ago, and millions of games have been played. Some players don't have fun (like Steelix100, his hatred toward it is really strong), but some do. My personal evaluation of unbalance between the two games in ppt1 is: below 20000 in puzzle league, the gap is 2000~3000; above 20000, the gap can be even larger. I mean. the best puyo puyo players doesn't have much chance against the best tetris players. It's like two tetris players with a rank gap of 3000-5000 playing against each other. The lower ranking one can win some games by chance, but in the long term the result is clear. The point is, there is ranking point gap indeed, but it's not so hopeless. After 6 years of practice, Sega has enough data that is not there when ppt1 was created.
As for part 1, its logical fallacy is "difference doens't equal to in-compatibility". I respect the listed facts, but what's the relation to in-compatibilty? Can't see any explanation.
As for part 2, I agree with 2b and 2c. But...
2a) The author is right about tsd, tetris, and btb. However, regarding perfect clear, he just goes back to the "puyo " argument again, and to some extent I agree that perfect clear is OP to some extent. And as for "hold" and 7-bag RNG, he is totally wrong. Hold and 7-bag RNG is as important as T-spin and B2B, they are the reason why modern tetris is BETTER than classic tetris. Moreover, hold and 7-bag generator helps B2B. At this point of reading, I figured out that the author doens't even play "a little more than casual" tetris. Because I know the T-piece and I-piece will or won't come in a short while, and I have a hold slot for T-piece and I-piece, I can do the calculation, and it's not easy at all. The difficulty has been proved by top level players: after 6 years, they are still improving their build-up technique. Classic tetris player is just keep surface flat and wait for the very, very random I-piece coming. (I can boldly say, the top level modern tetris player can beat up classic tetris player within a very short time, if they decide to do so. I know this is controversial.)
Then maybe out of anger, the author even start to blame for the randomness of modern tetris, though it's also the essence of puyo puyo and the beloved classic tetris too. IMO, the controlled randomness is good and natural.
Actually if you think carefully about author's complaints, you will find that some of the mentioned disadvantages are totally parameterizable. Even more, The author sometimes is obviously working on the parameter thing himself.
2d) Here again proves that the author is not a modern tetris player at all. He may watch a lot of games and come to correct and incorrect conclusions. Come feel the force of the modern tetris, classic tetris players, I could just say.
2e) "The only time you ever actively interact with your opponent (sending garbage does not count as actively interacting with your opponent, by the way), is the choice to either receive and send back garbage with a potential counterattack or offset an incoming attack with your potential counterattack." Wrong. This argument just try to ignore the fact that modern tetris do have a lot of "screenwatching", and it's been there BEFORE ppt1. The inventor of "timing" technique, or maybe the one who widely spread it, is hebomai. When you find your opponent is in big trouble, and you are in a good situation (e.g. a spike plus a t-spin is prepared, or simply at a much lowerr stack-up height), you just stop and wait for the opponent sending the garbage lines. In this way, the garbage lines are exchanged, but not cancelled. This timing attack is even more effective in ppt1, because it's hard to defend with combo in ppt1. Let me point out two falseness of the argument:
1) The interactivity of screenwatching is close playing tetris or puyo puyo. Your can't spend to much time watching your puyo puyo opponent's play based on the same reason: puyo puyo needs speed too. Mostly you think hard for a better build-up in you own field.
2) The effort taken on screenwatching is close playing tetris or puyo puyo. If you are not the one who build up a chain, with a glimpse you simply can't calcualte out the number of combo it will make. What you see is like if there is an immediate attack or the screen is occupied by grayness. Same in tetris. What tetris player see in the opponent's screen is the stack-up height, the grayness, and if there is a spike or t-spin build-up.
Btw,
1) in tetris there is no corresponding stuff like the sound of stone falling in puyo puyo, so this is an advantage tetris has over puyo puyo when it's a puyo v.s. tetris game.
2) The fxxxxxx combo opening make you watch your opponent's field quite often. It's a bad thing, boring as fxxx, but yeah, you interact with your opponent a lot when both side are playing combo opening.
Now part 3. Actually part 3 exists due to the lack of explanation in part 1, the author knows it. But he still fails to explain in part 3, because... it's very complex. You need experiments to know if it's really "fundamentally incompatible", "unparameterizable". You can use simple mathematics to calculate the damage, the duration, the difficulty of a specific position, ... etc, but eventually you need experiments. I don't blame the author for the lack of experiment, I blame Sega for its neglect of the problem and the huge amount of experiment and evidence that have been there since 2014.
It's sad to hear doremy suffer from ppt2. Doremy afaik is the best ppt1 player outside Japan, he/she has improved a lot for these years, and wxxxx on the other hand is the kind of player who uses eye poke every time if it's allowed in a fight, simply every time. There is a reason why top level tetris player avoid using c4w in their matches.
Another bad news is I just reviewed the new mode that comes with an HP bar and some party items and there seems to be a sure-to-win strategy already found though the game was released only a week ago:
1. Play c4w
2. Use HP increase item, that helps to offset the damage caused by the initial garbage lines sent by opponent's b2b or pc
3. Use "piece change magic" item to continue the combo if necessary. This is horribly strong for all combo openings.
Even worse, there is an item that can remove all the garbage lines instantly. This is very good for s4w because the weakness of s4w is it gets topped out easily. Now it can avoid the top out and stack up even higher. Of course it's still not so clear if other openers can effectively use these items or not, but what I feel is Sega rather create a new mode that looks quite difficult to balance (so many items!) but not go for some rule fix for ppt1?
ppt1 is a miracle. The design team aims at efficiency, that is a huge change at that time, and a huge success afterwards. Now they just fill ppt2 with artwork?
The fact that Puyo actually is said to win at lower levels of play before becoming nearly unwinnable at higher levels is yet another problem that cannot be solved. Any change you make trying to balance one side will break the other. Both games have very different learning curves, you cannot force them to be perfectly equal at every level.
Sega actually nerfed Puyo in PPT2, I see this as a tacit admission that this game mode can never be competitive so they're just focusing on low level casual players instead.
This sounds like you've never played anything else besides Guideline and NES. NES is certainly a janky game, but there are plenty of other versions that have had far better ideas for handling droughts and floods without allowing for scripted openers or card counting strategies. Check out TGM, DTET, Cultris II, or open-source games like Nullpomino or Cambridge that are fully moddable and contain a whole bunch of different randomizer settings. I honestly think it's sad that TTC insists on keeping a few half-baked ideas from 2001 set in stone forever without ever considering that there could be a better way.
But this is all beside the point, I don't want to derail this with a discussion on Guideline. I do understand that Guideline players like their game the way it is and after years of memorizing 7bag openers aren't going to want change now. Just as I like Puyo the way it is, don't like the changes that mixed versus forces on it, and wouldn't want any further changes you suggest either.
Concentrating on what you're doing while watching your opponent and parsing everything they're doing is indeed very very hard to do. But that doesn't mean you don't try! This is a large part of why Puyo's skill ceiling is so huge, you do have to master this skill to truly get good at this game. The ability to watch your opponent is what separates players who know how to build chains from players who truly know how to play Puyo Puyo. I've played a lot of versus puzzle games, and no other game I know has even a fraction as much emphasis on watching and responding to your opponent as Puyo does. And that's why I love this game so much, because it actually feels like I'm playing against them rather than just racing DPS.
Honestly, this statement just tells me that you don't really understand what competitive Puyo is. And that's okay, if you're not a Puyo player I wouldn't expect you to. But then please just take a Puyo player's word for it on this when I try to tell you that mixed versus truly destroys the game we know and love.
Frankly, balance isn't even my biggest concern. Underwater Puyo[puyonexus.com] is a 'balanced' game because it's equally miserable for both players, but that doesn't mean I want to play it - it's still a miserable game mode. Mixed forces Puyo players to unlearn everything we know about playing this game normally. There is no change you can make that would solve this, you can only further exacerbate that.
Almost the entire competitive community hates this mode, and the few people that do enjoy playing it casually still agree that it can never be seriously competitive. Earlier you suggested taking the filters away in order to force us all to play a mode that we don't want to play, if you do that the only thing that's going to happen is that we all uninstall and go back to Puyo Puyo Champions.
It's been six years of this discussion going in circles, and I don't want to have to keep repeating it for six more. Please just understand that we've had so much time to come to a consensus on this, you're not going to change our minds now.