Hey, I'm myl35t0n3. I've been playing Tetris every day for 1 1/2 months now. How much progress should I have made by now? My Marathon record in 250k points at level 10, I can clear 40 lines in 2:29:94, I can do T-spins, I play quite fast, and I play Tetrisfriends' Marathon, PS3 Tetris, and LockJaw. Am I making good progress? If not, what do I need to learn?
I don't remember anything about where I was after 1 1/2 months of play, so I won't be able to help you there. I'd just keep playing for now and see where that takes you. If you're aiming for a specific goal, we can certainly give tips on how to tackle that particular area.
1 I think you should have made more progress by now. It might be the inherent awkwardness of the default controls (which I assume you are using). When I changed from defaults and put all my controls on [asdf, jk, & spacebar] my 40L averages were much better after two weeks. You also have no DAS/ARR upgrades, and should go for at least 2 DAS/3 ARR (ARR past 3 won't matter). I don't even know if I'm allowed to talk about nullpomino here (first post hi btw), but playing first player modes there and multiplayer on ToP will make you a much better tetris player (assuming your framework is SRS rotation like Tetrisfriends). The reason is every line cleared on TF gives you a 0.5 second penalty, while on these other games there is no line clear delay, so they train you to think much faster. Then when you go back to TF you will feel like you have all the time in the world during line clears to think. In the event that we aren't allowed to mention clones, I will just give my quick spiel on why I think TTC would actually want us to be discussing them: they are not interested in the nitpicking feedback from their elite players since most of their playerbase could care less. So if a few handfuls of advanced players spend their time on ToP instead of TB or TF then it's problem-solved for them because we aren't whining anymore about line clear delay or features like 180-rotate. Anyway, something is really off if you are still above 2 minutes. I remember struggling to get below 2 minutes, and thinking it was really hard at the time, so nothing to feel bad about there. But once you start shaving off seconds/minutes you will never find situations where you go above 1:30 no matter how much you misdrop. That's another reason why nullpomino is great, it will show you your pieces/per/second at any given moment on the side, so if you slack you will know. Having a drum & bass or metronome sound in the background can help keep you focused too (lots of metronome videos on youtube). As far as Marathon, it's not ideal but you should be able to abuse SRS like crazy until you get the hang of it. You basically can spin the piece for as long as you want until you get something you like, so the high speed is really irrelevant. There is also using both rotate directions, but that's not that critical until your 40L score starts going under 1:15. I watched your Marathon replay and you definitely do not do this. You also hesitate a lot; you shouldn't worry about locking pieces and causing overhangs - they're easy to fix and Marathon gives more overall points if you only do singles anyway. But another thing you might want to try on nullpo is 100L, which will teach you endurance and make it easier to cross that finish line (most people suffer the most when trying to clear those last few pieces). I don't want to hijack this thread, but I would be happy to elaborate on any area if you like. I'm a new player too, and have been playing for about 5 more months than you, although quite often and I've been taking training pretty seriously.
Re: 1 I'd say it's critical to start using both directions as soon as possible. People who get into the habit of using only one find it a very hard habit to break. Using both from the beginning means you won't have to deal with that later.
I kept a log of my progress since I started (last May), and you can see a summary here: http://harddrop.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3645&st=0 I hit consistent 1:30 around a week after playing. Of course, I practiced nothing but 2-step finesse. Didn't touch any other game than nullpo sprint. Not tf, no marathon modes, can't eventspin. But progress was FAST. I highly recommend on focusing on one aspect at a time, like I did.
Re: 1 Agreed and habits are hard to break, but we are dealing with undoing many bad habits here and I think relearning a new control scheme should be a priority. The reason I say that is I had to revert to single-rotation while acclimating to my new controls, and since that was recently I still haven't even made the next leap to 180-rotate yet. The default key for left-rotate on TF is the left control button, and I don't see how anyone can realistically use left rotate in an intuitive way with this key, especially when fumbling with shift, which is the the default hold key (giving the left pinky two tasks). @myl35t0n3, you don't have to jump into double rotate all at once. The most important thing is to be able to tspin from both directions. It's necessary for tspin triples, but nice for tspin doubles too because you can use wallkicks for your tspin doubles which make them faster/smoother. But the rotation of your Ts in general is very important, and so are your L/Js. After you get good at that, the next step is using SRS finesse, which means that rotating the S/Z/Is the correct way will save you a step (rotate right to move one of these to the right and vice versa). GL and it's not so bad after a while. Maybe slow down a bit until you feel confident with the rotation. I have no doubt that you will consistently be sub-2minute by Thanksgiving.
Yeah, I think a nice, comfortable control scheme that splits movement and rotation/hold onto separate hands is a good place to start. Some players have gotten quite good with "unbalanced" control schemes like the default, but I think there are some tricky things about having movement and rotation on the same hand that are nice to avoid in the long run if you have the choice. Either way, rotating in both directions is a great thing to learn early on. Instead of rotating three times clockwise, you can rotate counter-clockwise once. Also, http://www.ryanheise.com/tetris/tetris_stacking.html is a neat little primer with some general advice on stacking for tetrises. It might come in handy as you continue to develop your stacking style.
Well if you look at the (hundreds?) of improvement threads on harddrop, I believe every single one mentions double-rotating. So it's safe to say that double-rotating is necessary to get to a high level (with a few rare exceptions). But also don't forget that it's not how long you play for, but the intensity that you put into your practice. You really have to pay your dues to get good at tetris. If you look over your profile, your Sprint score might only be 2:39 but you only completed 3 games, and you only attempted Marathon 7 times. The people who can get their 40L scores under 30 seconds (I'm not one of them), have mostly grinded away at that mode in the tens of thousands of times. And I'm not sure where you are doing your multiplayer, but it says you have only tried Arena 9 times. And TF Arena is hardly even playable until you are rank 11+ (in gold) and you have the option of E+ mode. That will make gravity faster (easier tspins), random garbage (rather than a huge column), the ability to counter lines sent to you with combos (reduce that red bar to prevent random spike KOs), and a few other features. You absolutely should practice double-rotating, but I think it would be more meaningful for you to focus your goals on raising your play attempts at each mode and get some raw experience. So rather than aim at sub - 1:30 sprint, aim at 100 sprint games played. Then you will indirectly get your goal for sure.
Actually, DarthDuck has a point about the default control settings. If you're still using those, the first thing you want to do is change them to something more sensible. Then work on rotating both directions.
I presume that I deleted my post while editing it because I don't see it now, lol ._. Brief summary of what it said: You need to play a lot of tetris to get to a relatively advanced level. On TF, you've only tried Sprint 3 times, Marathon 7 times, and Arena 9 times. Instead of having goals as results, I suggest making your goal to be 100 completed Sprint games. By doing so, you will easily meet an indirect goal such as a sub-1:45 Sprint. And as far as Arena, you should try and get your rank to 11 because until then the gameplay is horrible due to the lack of the expert+ mode option. Among other things, this modes gives you faster gravity for tspins, reduces the chances of topping out from bad luck, and creates messier garbage for meaningful downstacking. Another tip that might help you (based on your Marathon replay) is to remember that 1-player modes don't really matter. You should try moving at speeds faster than you can handle, committing to a faster hard drop rhythm and hitting hard drop whether you think you found a good spot or not. If a piece fits at all, then hit hard drop. If it creates an overhang, no problem you can just fix that. If you push your speed enough, it becomes your new comfort zone. v lol ok
Sorry DarthDuck, your post got moderated by the auto spam-catcher. I approved it, but a subsequent edit of the post triggered it again and I had to re-approve it. It's sometimes a bit annoying (and confusing), but with the amount of spam traffic we get it's an absolute necessity. Once you've been active for a while the spam filter will stop targeting you.
So I should mainly focus on my Sprint times? Will that gradually improve my Marathon gameplay as well?
you said you marathon record is level 10? why you died? please link us your TF profile, so we can see you abilities and style. records you mentioned are not impressive for 1.5 months of playing, but probably you can improve with some tips. good thing you play multiple games, it helps a lot to get real skills.
not much bad with your play, just try to do what you do faster. you need to press your keys faster and also learn to think one piece ahead, so instead of thinking where to place current piece, think where to put next, this saves lot time. i recommend to learn rotate both directions, it won't improve your performance on current level, but later it will be more important.
