Quality-of-Life in Tetris Games

Most other Tetris games (all that I've played, at least) throw randomized garbage at the opponent. It scales with the number of lines you clear, but it always has a one column gap in a random position, no control over that.

But TGM's garbage is deterministic. Basically, imagine taking the lines you just cleared, but remove the piece that completed them. That missing piece will be the gap. Flip what's left upside down and add it to the bottom of your opponent's stack.

Now you have full control over the position and shape of the garbage you send!

This adds a nice layer of strategy and makes the game feel more interactive since you need to constantly watch your opponent's stack and act accordingly. You want to add garbage where your opponent will struggle to clear it while also being on the lookout for what kind of garbage they'll be sending you and try to play around it.

And there are powerup items to spice things up, which admittedly vary widely in power level and can be very swingy. Although that's not necessarily bad as it allows players of different skill levels to play together (although the stronger player will still win most games), as well as just add some exciting or funny turnarounds. There's also a timing element to triggering the items, which adds even more strategy.

https://tetris.wiki/TGM_Versus_Mode_Guide

It’s a bit of a shame Sega/Nintendo chose to localize the first game in the series rather than the sequel with the updated rules.

I have played a lot of (moderately high level) 1v1 tetris and I would have to disagree. In fact I often felt that the reverse is true - if I felt I died to garbage hole RNG, really that meant I was getting out pressured and would have lost eventually anyways. And while my playstyle was more aggressive, try to out speed opponent, I lost my fair share of games to people playing (much) slower but just incredibly efficient.

I agree there is an overall disappointing amount of interaction between players, though. Watching your opponents board and adjusting to it is hard and takes a while to build the skill to do. And a lot of the times you can just get away with it by playing faster and out pressuring and ignoring the other player.

Two mechanics that come to mind are (1) targeting bonus and (2) the finite garbage cap.

1. Targeting bonus makes it so that if multiple players are attacking you, your attack is buffed. Intuitively it makes sense, since it evens the scales a bit: If, by happenstance, you are unluckily targeted by multiple people, at least you have a fighting chance at surviving the 1v2 or 1v3 etc.

One counterintuitive consequence of this, however, is that an optimal strategy to farm KOs is to stack very high on the board so that you are in danger of topping out. A reasonable number of other players will have their targeting strategy set to KOs (since it is 1 of 4 options), and will target you. If a massive number of players are targeting you, a reasonably skilled player is in no danger because they can easily offset incoming damage with singles or doubles, buffed by targeting bonus.

Example of a game using this strategy to achieve 51 KOs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cat9TbAwRWU

Another consequence of this is in the teams mode, if the teams are imbalanced, counterintuitively, a top level player would prefer being on the smaller team over the larger team. To be fair, there is a certain skill floor required to survive the initial onslaught. But if you can survive and get KOs, the attack % buff you get from the KO badges will eventually give you an advantage over the larger team, eventually to the point where victory is almost guaranteed.

Extreme example of a player winning a 1v98: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTE4zEKtxkA Most normal players would not survive the initial influx of garbage. In particular, because the garbage meter is constantly full at 12, you are not even outputting any damage at all unless an individual line clear sends 13 or more (in which case, 12 of that cancels the incoming garbage, and a mere 1 attack is sent out).

But once you start getting KOs, you start getting badges, and eventually by the time the opponent team dwindles enough that you no longer have targeting bonus, you will have a +100% attack bonus from full badges, and you should be able to easily destroy the remaining players.

2. There is a garbage cap of 12. Which means if your garbage meter is full and more attack comes in, it just vanishes.

Intuitively this makes sense for balance reasons, to make the game feel less RNG/frustrating. If you are unlucky and receive damage spikes from multiple players simultaneously, your incoming garbage is never more than 12, so at least you have a reasonable shot at surviving.

A consequence of this however, is if you are on the backfoot and your garbage meter is filling up, it can be better to play slow than to play fast.

For example, suppose you have 8 incoming garbage. Instead of playing quickly, it can be a better strategy is to not place the piece, and wait for your opponent to send. Suppose your opponent sends 10 attack. Here, only 4 of that will go into your meter, and the rest will vanish. Then you can accept the garbage, and you will be in a better position than if you had played fast.

Even if you are at a badge disadvantage, it's possible to catch your opponent off guard with an unexpected counterspike, expecially if they have just sent everything and have no resources to defend.

Example of a Tetris 99 game where the final 2 lasted for 23 minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoLh5w5rwS0 At 19:55 you can see Amemiya stalling until he sees that Doremy has no resources on his board, and then counterattacks fast.

A few years back, HardDrop hosted Tetris 99 snipe lobbies, and those lobbies would stretch excruciatingly long because even with badge disadvantage, reasonably skilled players are very, very good at stalling.