A Great Idea With Terrible Execution (Tetris 99)

all right perhaps terrible is a bit harsh and I want to make it clear that i genuinely enjoy tetris 99 honestly I think it's a fantastic idea for a Tetris game however there is one design choice I do believe makes the experience much more frustrating than it needs to be I'm sure anyone who's played the game knows exactly what I'm going to talk about especially for those who have yet to play Tetris 99 we need to establish how things have worked in the past so we can better compare the design choices made tetris 99 so in tetris games ever since the days of the gameboy no not that one not that one either do you think this is a joke yeah there we go there has been a system in play called garbage blocks so yeah it's been around for a long time garbage blocks are lines of blocks added to your playing area anytime your opponent clears two or more lines and attack of sorts to make the vs. amount Tetris more competitive it's a good system and when you're playing of two three or maybe even four people it works well because it's not too hectic and the garbage you receive is understandable as to say it's not like it came out of nowhere you have an easily visible update of the board responsible for it you just received and by easily visible I mean you can make out what's going on if I having to get a damn magnifying glass four-person Tetris is all fine and dandy sure but 99 players how do we do that you can't possibly send your garbage blocks to everyone because of 98 other people sending you garbage all at one time you would have games that last all in five seconds so what did they do in short they said good you decided you're attacking at any point during gameplay you can choose exactly which person will receive the garbage blocks from the lines you clear which sounds fine enough until you realize this also means there can be more than one person targeting you at any given time signified by a beep in the yellow line showing which players board has you targeted there is absolutely no cap on how many people can target you which means you can have a game where everything is super chill and then in the span of ten seconds your entire board fills up before you can even say do what the f-- call me a cynic but I think there's something fundamentally wrong this system we start up a new game and this happens the whole targeting system leads tetris 99 to being more often than not a game more about luck opposed to actual skill on my very first game of tetris 99 I didn't realize you could hold pieces kept accidentally trying to use a stick because the fact the game forces you to use this while calling it a d-pad would be giving it way too much credit so these four tiny buttons is a joke and in general I just kept making a whole lot of dumb mistakes because I hadn't really played Tetris in years despite all of this I still managed to get into the twenties because I got lucky and no one decided to target me it was just a slow calm game while I tried to figure out why I'm such a dumbass conversely I've played games where I thought I was doing pretty well until the tetris gods decided to smite me if 10 dudes erroneously attacking me and I go ready here from a mile away look you listen here pipsqueak I'm not a pro or anything but for what it's worth I have managed to get first place before so I definitely want to say I'm bad at Tetris I understand if you're just godly you can circumvent any of this but nobody's gonna argue that Kirby is good and smash melee just because a pro player could be too casual using him not to mention just because you can circumvent 20 people targeting you if you're a god doesn't make the board filling up in under 10 seconds any less unfair there's so many things that could have done the remedy this issue but instead they decided to add an auto target for people who are already losing yes there is a selection to have the game send all your garbage blocks to people who are already losing okay that just straight up evil hanging in by a thread just to have 5 Yahoo's basically guarantee your demise is straight-up bullcrap in fact I'm convinced it was implemented by Satan himself look I don't want to make it sound like I'm saying Tetris 99 is some terrible abomination I especially don't want people think that it isn't ok to like the game because of the system employee in fact I don't even doubt there might be some people out there who actually like the seemingly random nature of role nonetheless I would like to suggest a list of changes that could be made to make Tetris 99 the less aggravating experience the first suggestion I have especially if they want to keep the current system is to scale the attacks contingent on how many people have you targeted for example if just one person has you targeted it would be 1 to 1 with what they get so if they clear line your receive a line likewise if you have 3 people targeting you it would take a combined three cleared lines between all of them to send you a single line I'm not sure exactly how works currently and for all I know the system they have right now maybe wade in some porn but if that is the case then it definitely isn't significant enough in its current state for my following two suggestions I'm going to say we drop the current system entirely because beyond being unfair I think the current attacking system is way more complicated than is really necessary mind you Tetris is a game that got popular and do Park to its accessibility even my grandma plays this game I mean all you need is a single button in a d-pad to have a functional Tetris game so the fact that there have been countless people online asking wait how the hell does this work to a Tetris game I think is a telltale sign that this system likely wasn't a great idea from the start again this is Tetris we're talking about one button in a d-pad is all you need yet the left stick the right stick and the not d-pad are all used for completely separate things when it really doesn't need to be this convoluted it's a creative system for sure but creativity is not synonymous with being fair at the very least if they do keep the system the way they have it now it certainly shouldn't be the default game mode what do I propose in well the first solution is extremely simple let's say you join a game and your player 45 all the lines you clear will be set to player 46 and player 46 were to be ko'd you would then start targeting player 47 and so forth not a necessarily interesting system sure but that system would definitely be more fair the next one I'd rather they go with however so my idea was this you have a bar to the right of your play field in any time any of the other ninety eight players clear align the bar would gradually fill up once it is completely full you would be sent a line the less players remaining in the game the faster everyone's bar would fill up and the more lines everyone would be sent at one time for example if there were still 93 players in the game having your bar full would result in receiving a single line but then if there are only 36 players left you would instead be sent three lines and from there implement a feature that anytime you clear a line it would bring your own bar back down not only with the system even at the playing field but it would still incentivize players to clear lines for their own benefit the best part about this system is there wouldn't really be any questions asked it would be quickly understood when the player has their bar fill up for the first time and sees the garbage blocks edge of their board the association between your own play field and that bar is immediately clear from that point on they'll know exactly what benefit clearing lines have and why they need to keep that bar down I mean compare that to the system now where I wouldn't be surprised if there are still people who played several rounds of tetris 99 and still don't know what selecting the badges option I mean I didn't until I looked it up to conclude this video I again want to make it abundantly clear now how much is tarnished all over this game Tetris 99 is a lot of fun but I really would like to see another method of attacking implemented for the sake of my own sanity if rumors are true however Tetris 99 has already been data mined to show plans of future game modes the most noteworthy of which being the 50 V 50 team battle now that sounds amazing in fact even if they do keep the current system I think adding teams alone would alleviate much of the crazy unfair things that happened on your average game of Tetris 99 but until then Tetris 99 even despite the frustration is a game I love the play and is one I won't be done with anytime soon well until you make a puzzle League or poyo poyo 99 cuz let's be honest it's better than Tetris probably hey thanks for watching I'd like to give a shout out to my patrons such as Amanda Guth roaming battered cash nadir Q praetorium Mars and now B Knutson thank you all so much also for all my patrons by the time this video is up there should be a poll on my patreon so you can vote what my next video will be and if you're not a patron and you'd like to help support the show or maybe just follow me on social media there will be links below thank you so much for watching and until next time have a good one [Music]

Channel: SilokHawk

Views: 115,669

Rating: 4.2347903 out of 5

Keywords: tetris 99, silokhawk, tetris, nintendo, nintendo switch, review, battle royale

Id: tMs0cIK86og

Length: 7min 25sec (445 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 27 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/YOUREABOT]

The reward u get from clearing lines increases with the number of attackers on u - meaning u have an easier time defending incoming garbage lines and sending them. Why u'd put so much effort into a video where ur opinion is half cooked I don't know. Bad video.

[u/Fidodo]

The issue he has is that he doesn't understand the game mechanics. That's not his fault, because they don't explain the game mechanics anywhere, but when you understand them, the system is actually very simple and elegant. When you're being targeted by lots of enemies you get a huge attack bonus. This is the bonus table:

Nb of attackers	Bonus lines per attack sent
1	0
2	1
3	3
4	5
5	7
6 or more	9

That's bonus lines per attack, so you clear one line, and you send 9 lines to each person attacking you. It's actually a great system because if you're being attacked by a lot of people you're going to be playing defensively which means you'll be clearing smaller lines to try and clear the top of the board, and they reward that kind of gameplay. You can only have like 16 lines of garbage queued up, so all you need to do to clear that entire thing is just clear 2 single lines back to back and you'll get 18 lines set up and you'll already be on the offensive and lines cleared after that will help you rack up KOs. It balances itself out quickly.

The problem is that nobody knows how it works, which is definitely their fault, and people try to play under normal garbage queue clearing rules which means getting tetrises to get more lines to get the queue down, but that's actually a disadvantage when you have lots of attackers because a tetris will send back 13 lines if you have 6+ attackers, but if you were to clear them out one by one instead you'd send back a whopping 36 lines instead.

[u/Life_is_a_Hassel]

I’d agree that it’s a great idea with terrible execution, but the terrible execution is the lack of a tutorial. If there were a tutorial, this video wouldn’t exist because the defense mechanic is actually pretty great - more attackers = more bonus lines. More bonus lines = less incentive to Tetris stack, meaning you’re meant to fight back by clearing one or two lines at a time to push back against the garbage.