Soft drop is neded to slip pieces into sideways gaps significantly above ground level. sure if you need to drop and slide under, you use firm drop. but sometimes firm drop goes too far, and then you need to soft drop and slide, or simply wait for the piece to fall.
I think that what ct and digi are trying to say is that thoose situations can be handled by either building up to the hole, so you can slde a piece in, or by clearing around the hole, once you've built past it.
If you have a sideways gap above ground level, then it doesn't need to be fixed yet. You fix it once the ground level is higher, for which you can then use a zangi move. All TAP superplays with the "lopsided pyramid" building technique do it like that.
I can understand the need for a soft drop if the core gameplay completely depended on it as does Square mode. However, that is more an exception than a common thread among many tetris variations. As others have mentioned, skillful planning and play largely eliminates the need to soft drop.
i think you guys are overestimating yourselves. just yesterday in a heated 1 on 1 match, i did a huge misdrop, and i'm certain if not for soft drop i would have lost that match. maybe it's more important in vs than in single player. or maybe you guys just play too much 20g. =b believe me, i know where you're coming though. i used to have the philosophy to only hard drop at all costs, but eventually i admitted to myself that it sometimes can be a necessary evil. although, if given a choice, i personally would pick firm over soft: i don't see it as the ideal for a quality, competitive game. for that: 1 or 2 G soft drop, or option for firm.
Just to make a clarification, when I say skillful planning and playing large eliminates the need to soft drop, I also implied the usage of firm drop in addition to hard drop. I also believe that it's quite difficult to 100% hard drop. However, in most practical cases, soft dropping can be replaced with firm dropping. If there were gaps that only soft dropping could fix, I wouldn't even attempt them as they are risky and a little difficult to time.
