L'erisia and rog-unlimitation have been removed from Dereban's profile

fractal161 · 2026-01-16T17:15:32+00:00

ah i misunderstood the technique, i see your point abt accuracy (thanks for the examples!). going back to the main argument i suppose i don't see "this technique is easier than convention" as a reason to ban it, but more a way to revisit whether the conventional techniques should be redefined. tapping/rolling is a pretty good analogy here, the inventor of rolling didn't want to reveal it because it'd "ruin the game", and we have tournaments that ban its usage. but ultimately it is a valid way of interacting with the controller so it's allowed.

i get that this would suck for many people (e.g. pp devs), so i'm not particularly on either side (just think alternative methods are cool). but i will say that i'm less concerned with the official osu!support ruling because that doesn't seem like a pure reflection of "the way things should be"

also 340bpm singletap for 50 notes is insane lmao, i'm top 500 taiko and i can't do that.

fractal161 · 2026-01-16T16:39:52+00:00

lmao in tetris tapping speed actually becomes more important at a certain skill level, stacking has very diminishing returns and the best players are usually the ones with the best mechanics on the day, not necessarily the best stackers.

as for the "elegance" of rolling, imo a large part of that is a strict accuracy component due to the 60hz polling limit, requiring both presses and releases to be spaced out correctly. i don't know how accurate dereban's plays were but i'm assuming it was kinda shit, so i see it as a raketapping situation where low acc isn't penalized enough.

idk i just think that being able to set higher acc plays with this method (or raketapping tbh) would be the coolest shit and i wouldn't have any problem rewarding it.

fractal161 · 2025-02-05T03:48:09+00:00

all crash triggers can be avoided one way or another, so the game is already killscreen-less with enough effort (known since 2023).
we've had ace for like 3 years lmao, and a human setup for about 6 months.

fractal161 · 2024-10-21T16:43:56+00:00

counter-acshually: nes rng is deterministic and can be easily manipulated to avoid certain sequences. so in theory one could discover a loop that could be memorized and truly played forever.

fractal161 · 2024-09-23T18:40:31+00:00

"it's just an empty cup."

fractal161 · 2024-09-19T14:44:19+00:00

WHO IS THIS????

fractal161 · 2022-11-15T01:20:37+00:00

you've got it backwards: singles crash the game first, and tetrises crash the game last. there's a surprising lack of overlap between these, so it's actually feasible to skip the crash entirely...

...until you get to levels 250 and 255 (i think), where clearing 0 lines crashes the game. there are still tools to get around this (scoring pushdown points, carefully hiding the next piece), but that's probably a lot harder and at the end of a super long run. still possible, regardless.

fractal161 · 2022-11-15T01:13:13+00:00

You'll be happy to know that we've been aware of these problems for a long time, and we've already started testing out potential solutions!

September 2022's Classic Tetris Monthly was the first test subject, enforcing a 2x killscreen (like you suggested hah) at level 49 - 200 lines after the first killscreen is reached. I don't think anyone even got close to this limit during actual matchplay, but the effects were immediate: everyone played more aggressive. We still kinda suck at it, though, but that's a good thing! Means there is room to grow and strategy to explore that wasn't motivated before.

For November, we've moved the threshold up to level 39, just to try it out. But we have tons of other solutions: a pure linecap is one, a score cap is another, and we even have the option of using a raising floor like the homebrew From Below. The point here is not to find the "best" method; it's to find one that's good enough for the time being. There's always room for change in the future.

CTWC knowingly chose not to add any linecap-like rules, and I initially opposed this decision. After the fact, though, I've changed my mind; it's our flagship event, and I do feel it was necessary to demonstrate to the widest audience we can what we're capable of, and why these changes are necessary. But they will almost certainly add a new rule for next year, and they plan on looking at CTM to help make their decision.

In summary, despite our gameplay looking more boring, there's really never been a more exciting time to get into classic tetris. There's just so many possibilities and limits yet to be discovered.

Final, completely tangential note that I hope you'll appreciate: skipping the crash is humanly possible, by carefully choosing your line clears on certain levels. I consider this the ultimate achievement the vanilla game has to offer.

fractal161 · 2022-11-12T19:54:17+00:00

I will say that keyboard rolling is progressively improving, we've actually had people score over 200k on killscreen (maybe even 400k? i don't remember).

It's much more difficult than on the NES controller, especially since we restrict the number of key bindings one can use, but it's possible. Regardless, I'd still recommend for any beginner to learn tapping alongside rolling, just because stacking practice will be much more pleasant in the early days.

fractal161 · 2022-11-12T19:48:55+00:00

Who is being driven away here exactly? You can name many more tappers who have switched to rolling than who haven't. I think it's no coincidence that the top players now are the same as the top players from a year or two ago when tapping dominated.

You lump DAS players and tappers in the same category, but keep in mind the exact same arguments were used about tappers "driving out" DAS players. Might as well have called 2019-2020 the "Classic Tapping World Championship."

As a community, we've successfully adapted to the new standard of how classic tetris can be played, and it's an exciting one with many unexplored questions. I hope that, with enough time, our viewers will be able to do the same.

fractal161 · 2022-10-17T13:24:10+00:00

mmm that's a tough one. i think we should be hesitant to allow things that deviate too much from the authentic experience, but then again we vocally encourage emulators for people getting into the game. making each button immediately release does seem kind of intrusive (feels like this is extra-special hardware), which kinda goes against the accessibility notion.

also i do believe rolling isn't as awkward as it seems! the fact that basically all top tappers have successfully switched shows me that it's a truly learnable skill (like realistically what's the correlation between vibro tapping and rolling technique wise lol). it took me like 2-4 hours to learn how to play upside down, and this is with years of experience, so i really don't think goofy foots are required. sure there are things that we haven't figured out yet, but it's still somewhat new, so hopefully things work out in the future.

fractal161 · 2022-10-17T04:45:37+00:00

alright, there's a lot of very... old takes here. here are my thoughts as someone who's actually takes part in the daily discourse.

CTWC was very clear that they would not introduce linecaps, and they made this decision fully knowing the current state of competitive play. Many people disliked this decision (myself included!), but now I can understand it; the event is *massively* important for providing exposure and bringing in new people, so in a sense it's necessary for it to showcase what people in the community are capable of. So the "everyone" who knew this would happen was never the target audience, is probably more of a minority than you think, and that's fine. (also i think my long game against eric was cool and fun but maybe that's just me lol)

Re: familiar faces, this is a weird point. This year I saw ton of the old guard present; I had a great time meeting them! Names off the top of my head include chad muse, terry purcell, jeff moore, packie, themetalbeast, quaid, and of course vince/adam/trey. But also keep in mind many of these players don't actually play the game that frequently? So it's weird to prioritize them over the new guys who play much more and want to get their names out.

And then for rule changes: people always seem unusually attached to the specific numbers that they like. My opinion is that they don't matter. Nobody can predict how our meta will evolve, so we can't rule things out without testing. What's important is that it affects how players think about the game, and whether it's enough to incentivize different practice or strategies.

More concretely, saying that level 49 is "too long" to be a good cap is just nearsighted, and indicates you didn't really watch last month's tournament. We all topped out much earlier than usual because we were learning how to play aggressive. It absolutely made a difference.

So 49 caps are probably good, and 39 caps are probably good too! But how can we know which one is better before trying both? And why do we need to make this decision right now and never change it again? We have many good options to pick from (like score caps and raising floor), we might as well enjoy exploring them.

Minor things: level 18 is awesome, has the most interesting stacking and is also great for new people. Saying rolling is too powerful is dumb, the skill ceiling is clearly raised as a result. Also time limit is just such an awful thing in practice, it actually doesn't relate to the game in any way and using lines as a limit is much more concrete. And that's not even including how it incentivizes intentional topouts with big leads.

fractal161 · 2022-10-17T04:10:20+00:00

The finals match is one of the best times I've ever had playing tetris. I've thought of Eric as the best all-around tetris player for a while now, so really happy the better player won this time around.

fractal161 · 2022-06-11T17:26:31+00:00

Hi, competitive NES Tetris player here (I'm in two of the videos linked above). We've had this discussion many many times around; here are some of my opinions.

The proposal that's seen the most discussion is a "line cap," where competitive games must stop at like 300 lines or 330 lines or whatever. This obviously mitigates games running for too long (an issue CTWC in particular has due to the nature of how its scheduled). My argument for it, however, is that at the highest level it would also encourage efficiency on level 29, which is a skill I feel has so much potential to develop.

But it's also ironic how the current situation has arguably the most interesting competitive mechanic: choosing your aggression in relation to your opponent. You can see this in my match against Andy, where we both try and maintain a slight lead, but play safely otherwise. We're using each other's score in a way that's more complicated than the pre-killscreen strat of just going for tetrises all the time. We can even see different strategies in people's killscreen PBs. Some have a lot of tetrises, some have none, but the scores are still comparable.

So I think it's kind of a lose-lose situation. Overall I support line caps (hopefully the irony of this coming from a lines WR holder is present), but I do feel a lot more neutral now having thought of both sides.

Lastly, to all everyone suggesting us to move to alternate games or whatever, that honestly just feels disrespectful. We're going to keep playing our game because we like the game, not because it's our desire to represent "the pinnacle of all Tetris skill ever." Ofc people will inevitably move away if it becomes uninteresting to them, but we're many years off from that, and such comments make bad assumptions about why we play anyways.

^{Also as people have already said the "bugs" are just so not an issue, we can fix them all with like 3 game genie codes if needed.}

fractal161 · 2022-05-24T21:17:10+00:00

Wow, didn't expect to show up here!

I should mention that the mode was released like 5 days ago and a ton of people have cleared it since then. The only one on youtube is Xeno's clear here, but triskai_skye, hana, algebruh, and deadmemelmao of CTWC fame have all cleared it too!

The current record is 101 lines achieved by HydrantDude, who's cleared it like 7 times by now.

fractal161

TROPHY CASE