As western PPT enters its sixth(!) year, how do people feel about how the game is represented at competitive events?
While SEGA themselves seem inclined to push Mixed VS as the hallmark format, and Kiyobi was poised to run the first "major" at AnimEVO 2017 likewise, I pushed for Swap mode instead. The full discussion can be found here, but my reasoning boiled down to the following reasoning:
- Tetris was far more popular than Puyo outside of Japan
- Both parts of a crossover game should be represented in competitive play
- Matchup play forced Puyo players to ignore the "interesting" parts of the game in order to survive/win
- While Swap mode also forced Puyo players to play differently, it also added extra layers of strategy not previously present
- Nearly every player complained about game balance in mixed VS mode
- As a launch window Switch game, there would be additional eyes on the game that would likely not give it a chance otherwise
As a result, much to the consternation of many Tetris players, Swap mode became the defacto PPT standard at tournaments.
As the scene for the game has continued to evolve and mature, I've been revisiting those initial arguments and whether they still hold water today. The elephant in the room is that PPT has not led to the promised land that Puyo fans were hoping it would. While I feel like brand awareness of Puyo Puyo has improved, the growth in the Puyo competitive fanbase has not been astronomical, and invested Tetris players have largely decided not to attempt to learn Puyo (there are a few notable exceptions, like Wumbo).
In 2023, the "Puzzle Game Community" is by and large the "Tetris Game Community". The "World Puzzle League" majors solely run Tetris events, with PPT relegated to side event status (and still without any dedicated Puyo bracket). Likewise, at FGC events PPT is a side event game event, often restricted to one bracket per event. Frosty Faustings was a notable exception to this, which featured both Mixed VS and Swap.
And what of the dedicated PPT community? While new players who grew up with the game have entered the scene and are quite good at both Puyo and Tetris, online Swap mode brackets continue to be sparsely populated (poor netcode and challenges surrounding netplay tournaments are likely big detriments to its popularity). Meanwhile, innovations in Mixed VS have led to rising entrant numbers in these tournaments.
Given this, it seems like switching offline PPT tournaments to Mixed VS and dropping Swap might now be an option worth considering. You'd get to take advantage of the continued popularity of the Tetris community this way, and in the rare case two Puyo players meet each other on stream, they get to play a "real" game of Puyo.
One major downside is that few/some/many Puyo players still dislike playing against Tetris. The exact percentage is unclear, but some of them are at least willing to tolerate the matchup. The other major downside is the self-inflicted problem of cultivating offline Swap for six years. Would switching to Mixed VS turn these entrants away? And what about the players who actually have taken the time to git gud at both Puyo and Tetris? Swap mode is the perfect format for them to display their dominance over two games simultaneously.
The formula for "success" at LANs is fairly simple: get more people to show up to tournaments, consistently. Popular events get more money from venue fees and more eyeballs on hype streams. When your game becomes a draw to their event, you get upgraded to "official" side event status, and at some critical mass become a main tournament of the event itself. For Puyo, the challenge has always been trying to get people make the transition from online to offline.
