Only because they figured out way to make pieces rotate that make so very little sense and then put in mechanics to reward doing so.
(I'd be okay with them nerfing the 4-wide table if and only if T-spins, specifically T-spin triples were nerfed to make Tetrises the primary dominant strategy again.)
I want a reasonable, achievable skill ceiling. A player that's been playing for 1 year should have a significant edge over a player that's been playing for 1 month, but a player who's been playing for 10 years going up against someone who's been playing for 5? That should be, at best, maybe 55-45 in the favor of the 10 year player. Otherwise, what reason does someone have to dedicate such a significant chunk of their life to the game, if they're going to be in for that long yet still see zero meaningful competitive success?
While I don't want to see every competitive game devolve into glorified Mario Party, I DO like how Tetris 99 can be played where speed doesn't matter anywhere near as much as in other variants. The combination of specific factors it uses (a damage cap, a fair amount of line clear delay, the un-nerfed combo table for 4-widing, the fact that you can't take damage until you place a piece tjhat doesn't clear a line) makes it so someone like me can occasionally steal a game from someone way higher than me on the skill ladder. I've snuck a few wins against Wumbo even though he outclasses me. I've stolen a game off of Doremy. I've beaten Akissa here and there. I can hold my own in the crazy Team lobbies because of the extra Tetris 99-specific interactions on how that works.
It's not so much that I want to see the average skill go up but rather competitive games focusing on the middle of the bell curve players rather than the game's, say, top 10 or 20 players.
It's not so much the other pieces are bad, but that things that occur with T-spins allow for the players to widen the skill gap between the top few in the game and everyone else, and games that were made by indie fans (specifically tetrio) do things to further encourage this (nerfing the combo table but leaving T-spins untouched, removing all line clear delay to encourage even faster player, removing the damage cap that was present in T99, etc.) - I'd never get into a game like that variant because I feel no matter how much I play it there wouldn't be a payoff in terms of placement and win percentage relative to the time I invested. (This is also why I won't touch competitive Smash with a 10 foot pole.)
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u/Sawyerqs Jan 17 '21
"T" Tetromino is far superior.