I got around to recording a bit of myself playing TGM2, and I was hoping I could get some advice from you guys as to what I should work on. I have only been playing TGM2 for about a month so I'm quite slow and probably make a lot of poor decisions with pieces. Anyways, here's the video: www.twitch.tv/ryankenhaha/c/6050983 I talked a little while playing so that it's maybe more apparent what I'm thinking. It made me play a bit sloppier sometimes, but I think making my thoughts more apparent was more important. Also: I'm intentionally trying to push myself to play fast and stack for tetrises, I'm not really trying to survive super long. Also also: I randomly played 20G mode a couple times. My 20G is AWFUL so hearing some things I could be doing better would be awesome. Thank you! Edit: also i had one game where I played fast and good where CT came and started watching it was cool.
So, overall I'd say that your low-G stacking is pretty good. You make overhangs at appropriate times rather than holes, which is nice. That said, you do seem a bit weak in terms of missing a lot of spins that could allow you to easily fill overhangs or gaps, meaning you sometimes make holes or mess up your stack stability when you don't need to. The spins are kind of higher-level stuff though and they take a while to learn (either watch lots of high-level videos, or study this), so I wouldn't beat yourself up over it. I'll admit I kind of watched the first five minutes and then skimmed through, so this might not be reflective of how you play overall, but one of the big things I'd comment on is that low-G you spend a lot of time where you're kind of faffing about and are neither clearing Tetrisis nor getting the stack under control. In TAP Master you either need to be clearing Tetrises or triples - nothing else really does all that much for your grade unless you're chaining them together. Time spent clearing doubles and singles is OK, but only if your stack is a bit of a mess and you need to tidy it up - in this circumstance you've got to be effective and quick about doing it, or you can quickly waste 100 levels (a whole 10% of your game if you can reach 999, or a much higher proportion if you can't). Otherwise don't get too hung up on one or two holes in your stack at the bottom - just stack over it and carry on with Tetrises. I don't really like to dwell on specific placement examples because I think they're a waste of time in terms of teaching/learning, but there's one I'll use, which is this sequence from around 2:29 in the video: Tetris demonstration diagram Stepping myself through with the same pieces (and without giving myself knowledge of the full previews), I came to these placements: Tetris demonstration diagram (For reference, this is low-G. If it was high-G I'd have put the T flat on the left hand side instead - probably a better placement all round) In 12 pieces, you go from a messy stack to a stack that's still a complete mess (you do admit that you're messing things up during the video, in your defence), clearing three singles along the way. With the same pieces, via a double and a single, I go to a stack that's stable again and ready for clearing Tetrises, and there are probably players who would do better again over my version. The main issue, as I see it, is that you're not prioritising what you're doing with the stack properly. As a general rule with ARS, you want the middle of your stack to be the highest, and you want your columns 9 and 10 (i.e. the rightmost two) to be clean and clear for Tetrising. In this case they're not - the lowest column is 8, and you've got blocks in 9 and 10 that you've got to get rid of to keep Tetrising. Your I placement is bad because it doesn't help clean anything up, and it also makes it more difficult to access columns 9 and 10. Given your bad I placement, the L placement afterwards is OK, but I think the better placement would have been on the left there. You've got a part of the stack that is ideally cleaned up by an L (a J or an I work as well, but not as nicely), you get one, and then you don't use it. You should - don't pass up gifts from the randomiser. Any time you get a single-column hole that's two rows deep, then unless your stack is a real mess you need to prioritise getting an L/J/I in there, because otherwise it can quickly start restricting your mobility and where you can place pieces. After the L placement the S is correct imo, as is the O and I'd say probably the J because there's not much else you could do. Then with the S placement you clear a single, and on top of that you clear a single that doesn't actually help you fix your stack, because it keeps your columns 9 and 10 exactly the same height relative to each other. Personally I'd have placed it on the left, given that you're still at relatively low G. The I placement helps you sort out columns 9 and 10 finally, but at the same time it leaves you with a pretty nasty stack, and creates another hole that's 2 deep by one wide, and needs an L to fix it. What you could have done would be place it flat on the mid-left of the stack, vertical in column 5, or vertical in column 7 (one place to the left of where you did). The S placement after this is actually perfect. You create an overhang which is easily fixable, and so happens that you can fix it with the next piece. Except you don't, because you put the T in the wrong way and so can't exploit the kick (specifically this one). Also note in this circumstance that this kick would have been useful if you'd gotten an L. Fair enough if you're new to the game, but demonstrates why it's important to learn the kicks. I will say it's actually fairly hard to articulate why as an experienced ARS players I would make different placements to you, because a lot of it is from experience and how the stack intuitively feels to me. But a lot of it should centre around trying to find the fastest route to the stack being clean and tetris-able again. If your stack isn't clean then every piece you place should be an attempt to clean it up, rather than just putting pieces where they can fit. Each placement should be working towards fixing a hole, or giving yourself a clean part of the stack to dump pieces you don't want while you wait for the pieces you need to fix things (preferably on the left hand side). Don't be completely against stacking higher on the right and abandoning having a Tetris column, but again, only do that if you can see a way to clean things up and get back to normal asap. The way you clear up your stack after this example is fairly decent. However, you then completely shaft yourself again at 3:00 video time (2:46 game time) with the S and I piece. You have an OK stack, not great, but you've cleaned it up and can start looking to Tetris again, and then you stack right over your Tetris hole. DON'T DO THIS. Make holes in the middle of your stack if you have to. If you've got the column to Tetris on the right, then only surrender that under two conditions: 1) You're going to die in the next few pieces if you don't clear up elsewhere 2) You're trying to tidy something else up, the rest of your stack is pretty clean, and you know you can easily dig it back open again in the next 5-10 pieces By stacking the S you're blocked the hole, and then by putting a vertical I in column 10 you've given yourself a minimum of six lines before you can open it up again and Tetris some more. As it happens, you do, but it takes you six singles in the process. There's no need for it - even with you kind of needing to put the S piece there, the I could have gone pretty much anywhere else and it would have been a better placement. The only garbage with your stack is a single hole at the bottom row - just ignore it and move on, don't waste another 20 levels to dig it back up. As other advice, don't "try and play fast" as practice. Maybe do it for fun, but until you start hitting torikans and level 999, ignore speed. The game is going to get fast enough to kill you anyway, so there's no point pushing yourself overly hard in the slower sections. It's more important you actually get to the latter points of the game and get some 20G practice in, than dying at 200 because you were rushing yourself. But yeah, I could pull out a hundred examples where I feel you caused yourself problems but they're all fundamentally because you're not fully familiar with what is possible in terms of movement, in terms of kicks, in terms of when you should and shouldn't use IRS, but that's fine. That sort of stuff is exactly why TGM and ARS tetris is difficult but rewarding. Really study points 4 to 10 of this guide, and it should improve a lot of your game and help out massively with 20G when you start getting to it more frequently.
Wow, thanks a lot for the response. There are definitely a lot of movements I need to learn for filling overhangs and stuff, most of the more complex moves are foreign to me right now so that's a good observation. The main reason I switched up how I was playing like this is because until recently I used to practice by just going for level number, and not going for any tetrises or doing any risky fast moves that I might mess up. I decided I should probably learn to integrate some more new moves and stuff into what I'm doing and focus on things that effect grade, tetrises and playing fast, so that's what I've been doing for the last bit, to help my execution and fix my habit of not locking pieces in until I knee where I wanted the next one to go(very slow haha). When I first started doing this one of my main issues was missdrops, and doing this has made my execution much better but now that it's better, I'm definitely gonna start studying movement and start practicing with more slowl and deliberate choices.
Surprised nobody mentioned this: You aren't actually playing TAP in that video, that's TA (the non-PLUS version). For Master there aren't significant differences until you're trying to reach M, but you might as well play TAP instead as you get more modes and there's a couple of bugfixes.
Rosti, this is amazing feedback, and even though your Fumen example is pretty much identical to how I would do it (except from the final T piece), your comment were really helpful to me as well, even though it's directed towards OP. One thing really surprised me though: People always say that inevitable overstacking should be kept as far from the center as possible! And this also makes total sense, as it's a lot harder to clean up, and in my own experience, whenever I fuck up, it's usually due to overstacking near the center. I try to ONLY overstack in the center when I can see the ability to clean it with the very next piece. In fact, my Tetris hole is generally the place where I prefer overstacking if I don't see a way to avoid it, as it is normally extremely easy to clean up, while allowing me to stack neatly on the rest of the columns, ideally only postponing a potential tetris for a short while. I'm not saying you are wrong though. In fact, your tetris skills are approximately one billion times higher than mine, so I'm really hoping to learn from this stuff. Can you elaborate on why you're actually recommending keeping the overstacking holes near the center?
In short, it's because I'm giving advice to a new player rather than an experienced one. A lot of things in Tetris are incredibly situational, and even more so when you consider that a good player will handle a difficult situation a lot differently to a bad/new player. (Also this is definitely a case of 'do as I say, not as I do' - I stack over my own Tetris hole all the bloody time...) As a general rule, I would say overhangs > holes at the sides > holes in the middle, in terms of which are easier to deal with. It would therefore follow that you would want to create a hole at the side (i.e. cover your Tetris hole) over creating a hole in the middle, and I agree with this. The difference is that usually a hole in the middle is going to be 1-2 rows high, whilst making a hole out of your Tetris column could be 10-15 rows high. If you're a good player, then you can usually dig that hole back up pretty easily and the fact that you're cutting your playing field in half temporarily isn't a problem. Most of the time you wouldn't have even done it to begin with unless you knew you could clear it up in a straightforward way. For a new player, however, covering your Tetris hole could be something that you basically never clear up and either kills you or forces to spend ages trying to dig up (because a 12 row high hole is too much to just ignore and stack over). On the other hand a small hole in the centre is unlikely to directly kill you, and if you just stack over it and ignore it for the rest of the game, then you're probably not going to miss that single row all too much. I did kind of cover this with my "times it's OK to cover up your Tetris hole": For an experienced player that last aspect happens fairly regularly. For a new player it does not so much. Really it's a difference between an experienced player knowingly stacking over their Tetris hole in a way that they can later clear, and a beginner player having a "oh crap there's nowhere to put this piece" moment and just chucking it on the right hand side. If your stack isn't in great shape to begin with and you're starting to struggle with the speed, then I'd say blocking off your easiest option to clear down and give yourself more breathing room is not the best strategy.
Good stuff. I think I do have a tendency to cover my tetris hole too often, so this is something I'll take into account. I guess I should make a habit of overstacking the 9th or 1st column rather than the 10th when I don't have a plan. Of course, an even better solution would be to always have a plan....
I hope it's ok for me to hijack this thread to ask for some similar advice on my TAP game. I recorded a master run and a few death runs (been playing a lot of it so I can handle tgm1 20g). Sorry about the cropping - XSplit was doing something weird and I didn't notice until after the recording. I feel like my biggest problem is probably misdrops due to, well, misguided sanic speed (hey, what can I say, it feels good to go fast)? But if anyone had any other input that'd be excellent. Especially about what I can do to recover from those kinds of misdrops more effectively... Cheers!
Would you like some live commentary of your game? I might not have a lot of time but I guess I can still get to it. If so please send me your details via PM
