Just for a little. Maybe permanently. Who knows? It's all a mystery. Anyway, I'll be in the Bay Area on January 7th and 8th. I'm busy in the morning on the 8th, but other than that I'm completely free. Anyone wanna meet up, go to SVGL, maybe hit the SJSU arcade as well too? We could also do a TGM meetup with laptops or desktops or something if people are interested. I can bring Ti and TGM1 if necessary. Thoughts?
Kevin and I must be the worst poker players ever. edit: also, I made a vow a while ago to stop manual-locking in death mode until I could reach 500 twice in a row. I need to do that before this happens; I don't think I'll be able to keep myself from manual locking in the presence of Kevin
force myself to think about the placements I make instead of ramboing through them; focusing on consistency because I realized there were players who were worse at death than me but when I watched their TGM/Master mode vids they stacked a hell of a lot neater than I did. I still get some speed practice in, starting at 300 anyways. just focusing on consistency so I can die at 4xx every game instead of having 134, 421, 299, 96, etc... (couldn't tell whether that was sarcastic)
I think it's sarcastic on account of doing something arbitrary like that is usually pretty dumb for improving records. Training is one thing, but you shouldn't train all the time. Especially given that by focusing on improving one thing all the time you're generally losing ability on several other things. I'd say you're just lengthening the amount of time it's going to take you to get M (and get it consistently) for not a huge amount of benefit. There's nothing wrong with ramboing through placements (as demonstrated by my current personal bests on Death). IMO, consistency in TGM is a mirage. It generally doesn't exist, and if it does, it's largely worthless. When you think you're being more consistent, it's just that you've improved to the point where your base target is higher. Nobody breaks their personal best and then has that as their new benchmark for regular runs. PBs are not broken in a continuous linear fashion, generally you're just waiting for your next exceptionally good freak run to push your PB up as you slowly improve your true level.
it's not a mirage, the fact is you can be consistent at things far below your best abilities (e.g completing tgm1 almost every times)
I don't find the fact that I can get past level 70 in Death every time to be a particularly helpful measure of consistency. If you're pushing yourself, you'll make mistakes occasionally. I'd rather push myself a bit and have scores scattered all over the place between level 100 and level 950 than just take it easy and consistently get over 400 but stopped at the torikan at 500. You can't be consistently good (for your skill level) at TGM, only consistently mediocre, and I don't know why anyone would want that. For multiplayer games consistency is important, and you need to tone things down to achieve it. For single player, where every single run can be a potential new record, you've got to try your best, and that'll mean that decent consistency goes out the window somewhat.
Yes, it's not going to help my record--I might even have M by now if I had just "kept on trying" at the rate I was going before (who knows?). But I normally only focus on improving speed, and thus I lose ability on several other things: stacking neatly, digging through garbage, ... xD (okay I'm not being 100% serious here) This is true, at least to some extent. Let's then, replace the word "consistency", with "stacking skill", which I found that I was lacking in. I sometimes train using LJ with unlimited lock delay, so I can focus entirely on analyzing piece decisions. My weakness right now is piece placement decisions; not speed. I know this seems kind of a weird statement to make given that speed and piece placement decisions are to some extent directly related (having better "speed" means being able to make better placements more quickly, etc), but I know that when I play manual lock games, I am hardly thinking about the placements that i'm making--almost like i'm in zombie mode (not quite that bad though). Maybe this is just a sign that i'm lazy and should think more (lol), but I find that when I play no-manual-lock games I'm able to spend more time thinking about piece placements and analyzing the stack, which in turn "should" help me better at "stacking ability". Plus, i'm delaying myself the pleasure of manual-lock games so that when I go back to them it'll feel orgasmic I think you have valid thinking and I'm not going to say that what I'm doing isn't silly. In fact I do think that "reach 500 twice in a row" is a very arbitrary goal, and I'm not holding myself to it 100%, because really my goal should be "be able to stack better", but that's less concrete so it's just easier for me to make up some silly arbitrary goal. But part of this is also just observations based on watching other people. For instance, if you take me and Ai and sit us on TGM1 or Master mode, I bet that at least 9 times out of 10 he'll get SK medal before I do, not because he places pieces faster, or because I make more misdrops, but because I simply don't know how to stack for Tetrises as well. Which also makes sense because I play death mode all the time and he plays the other modes more often. And before I used to be fine with that, but nowadays I find that I would rather have bronze SK medal every time and reach 4xx than be able to have games that go to 7xx but then also have games that end at 1xx or 0xx (NOT because of misdrops, but because of stupid decisions). Call it ignorant bliss, but to me that would be "consistently good", not "consisently mediocre". Of course I don't think I'll actually end up at that point. By the time I get there it will mean I can stack well enough that I can always put 500 pieces on the board without dying, and then it would just be a matter of speed, which I -almost- have (still working on death 400), so by that time I'll push speed again and get M. I could accomplish the same goals by playing TGM1 or Master mode all the time instead. But I don't like sub-20G so i'm playing slow death mode =P (yes, I could play 20G master or something). Don't think of me as "lying on my ass and not giving a shit" when I play through 0-300. If that were true, then when I'm playing TGM1 the entire game would be lying on my ass and not giving a shit, because TGM1 only gets up to about that speed. On the contrary, when I'm playing 0-300 non-manual-lock I felt more alert and a better player than ever before. I actually tried a few manual-lock games during my "stupid self-imposed ban" and I was able to apply that alertness and skill to those. But I wasn't before, because I was neglecting it. There is obviously some balance to be achieved here. If I play every game non-manual-lock, then maybe i'll reach 500 every game, but I will simply never break the torikan. If I play every game manual locking all the way, even in 400, going as fast as I possibly can, then I'll be fast enough but I'll top out all the time. I just want to sit in a slightly different spot on that balance. waitaminute, this all sounds familiar... tl;dr: Rosti might be right but what I'm doing feels good to me and ignorance is bliss Don't worry, I will return to the "dark side" of speed soon enough.
Would you not even play a manual-lock game every five games or so, just to allow yourself to feel the difference and potential to improve?
I manual locked every game, even when it made me die in the early 300 area, just because I figured that there was no point in sitting at the torikan without being able to do anything about it. It's kind of unorthodox to have the speed and then extend the survival, I suppose, but that's what all the kids are doing these days so that's how I got it done. I found that the real only thing standing between me and Death m was the fact that pushing made me make worse decisions. So, instead of beating a dead horse and training decision making only, I trained myself to make decisions while pushing. In fact, I would argue that because you are giving yourself more time to think about placements when you are training, much of your training will become obsolete when you start pushing through in order to get m. It's a completely different game when you're pushing because you don't get that time to think. Even then, sometimes playing quickly will lead you to sacrifice some stack neatness for expediency of placements.
Maybe not as often as every 5 games, but sure, I would and have been recently, especially since I'm basically almost at my goal level of "lrn2stack better". Also to make sure that I can actually apply my "raised focus" level of ability to when I'm manual locking (I can). It'd be stupid if I started manual-locking after all this and all of a sudden I suck and instantly start dying before hitting 100 =P there is: go faster =P (i know i know, not the point...) Haha that was (still is?) a very real fear for me too. However as a counterpoint (i don't know how valid it is), realize that one of my bad habits is that I tend to have a very strong tendency to fall back upon "default moves" when I'm the slightest bit unsure of what to do. For example: In both of these situations I have the urge to IRS the Z and move it one left, since that's one of my "default" moves for Z pieces (it leaves column 5 high). But there are better choices in both cases here (especially the second). Now consider what happens if I'm manual locking: I don't have the time to really think about it, so I just place the Z badly using my "familiar" move. Results in a messier stack. Versus if I'm not manual locking: My initial instinct is to use the default move, but since I have extra time I find a better one and use that instead. Not only is my stack cleaner (obviously), but more importantly, the next time I encounter a similar situation I'll be able to realize this more quickly (since I PRACTICED making the better placement). I think I'm probably beating a dead horse into the ground here, but however silly my training is I don't think it should be incomprehensible to at least understand what I'm trying to do. Realize that my goal isn't just "break the torikan" because if it were then this would be an incredibly stupid way to do it. But if I can't even place 500 pieces in LJ with unlimited lock delay and live, then there's no point in trying to go faster because my "fundamental stacking skill" is flawed. this is true. there is some balance here which is up to the player to decide. As Kevin himself put it: Anyways it all doesn't matter because I'm almost done with special "consistency" training anyways. AND I'M NOT EVEN THE ONE WHO CAME UP WITH THE IDEA, DAMNIT >=( I feel bad for derailing this thread -twice- now (three times?). Also ramen sounds good right now, i'm hungry =(
