I know what you mean. I tend to put it down to perfectionism -- I often like goals I can achieve, rather than ones I can sort of. So if I have a choice I prefer trying to gain a level, or get foo without losing any bars, to getting a high score.
And when both are available I feel (for no good reason) that a score should be a good representation of progress, and am annoyed if it happens to reward something other than what I want.
OTOH if no other goal is there, I can be quite interested in scoring at least 10^N.
am annoyed if it happens to reward something other than what I want
Yes. One of these days I want to invent a new scoring system for Tetris, because I'm sick and tired of the emphasis on clearing large blocks of lines at a time which virtually all existing scoring systems reward.
drswirly is particularly good at playing for tetrises (clearing four lines at a time using an I-piece): I've seen him play Tetris Worlds from level one and end up on level fourteen having scored about thirty-seven consecutive tetrises and cleared no line that wasn't part of a tetris, in spite of steadily increasing game speed. This is of course fearfully impressive (and I suspect even he couldn't have done it without the various planning-ahead features that TW supplies), but although I can admire the skill involved I don't feel motivated to try to emulate it, because the thing I really like about Tetris is something else entirely.
The playing style I describe above doesn't depend on lines actually disappearing when you fill them; it would work exactly the same way if all the pieces you dropped stayed there for ever and the well just stretched at the bottom so you still had some room to manoeuvre at the top. He's just packing a box with tetrominoes, and the line-clearing business is simply a means of stretching the box as he goes along. But what I find really elegant in Tetris is play which depends on the line-clearing semantics in a much more fundamental way, and which simply wouldn't work if you were just packing a box. For example:
Here, dropping the Z-piece at the position shown leaves an unfilled hole below it, but it's OK because the clearing of a line immediately uncovers that hole again, so in Tetris this is not an error move whereas it would be in pure box-packing. Even better would be if the I-piece on the right wasn't already there but was known to be the next piece to drop: you could put the Z where I've shown it and then drop the I down the right, deliberately introducing a hole but knowing you were certain to be able to remove it again immediately. This sort of thing is elegant and cunning and strikes me as "thinking outside the box" in a way which pure box-packing strategies aren't; it's this type of play which makes me feel I'm playing well, and it irks me that conventional scoring systems don't reward it at all (the line about to be cleared in the above picture is a single line and hence the lowest-scoring kind of thing).
Of course, it is hard to invent a scoring system which only rewards deliberate making-and-clearing of holes; all Tetris players are familiar with the experience of creating accidental holes during play and then having to fight their way back down towards them to clear up the mess. If I just rewarded the clearing of a hole, I'd be rewarding doofus play as well as my elegant style of play. Perhaps the emphasis ought to be on clearing holes promptly? So that the example I show above involves a hole being cleared in the same instant as it's created, or one piece later, so it would score lots; whereas if you left a hole at the bottom of the playing area by mistake and eventually fought your way back down to it 200 pieces later, its potential-score-value would have gradually decayed to the point where you barely noticed the bonus for uncovering the hole.
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And when both are available I feel (for no good reason) that a score should be a good representation of progress, and am annoyed if it happens to reward something other than what I want.
OTOH if no other goal is there, I can be quite interested in scoring at least 10^N.
Yes. One of these days I want to invent a new scoring system for Tetris, because I'm sick and tired of the emphasis on clearing large blocks of lines at a time which virtually all existing scoring systems reward.
The playing style I describe above doesn't depend on lines actually disappearing when you fill them; it would work exactly the same way if all the pieces you dropped stayed there for ever and the well just stretched at the bottom so you still had some room to manoeuvre at the top. He's just packing a box with tetrominoes, and the line-clearing business is simply a means of stretching the box as he goes along. But what I find really elegant in Tetris is play which depends on the line-clearing semantics in a much more fundamental way, and which simply wouldn't work if you were just packing a box. For example:
Here, dropping the Z-piece at the position shown leaves an unfilled hole below it, but it's OK because the clearing of a line immediately uncovers that hole again, so in Tetris this is not an error move whereas it would be in pure box-packing. Even better would be if the I-piece on the right wasn't already there but was known to be the next piece to drop: you could put the Z where I've shown it and then drop the I down the right, deliberately introducing a hole but knowing you were certain to be able to remove it again immediately. This sort of thing is elegant and cunning and strikes me as "thinking outside the box" in a way which pure box-packing strategies aren't; it's this type of play which makes me feel I'm playing well, and it irks me that conventional scoring systems don't reward it at all (the line about to be cleared in the above picture is a single line and hence the lowest-scoring kind of thing).
Of course, it is hard to invent a scoring system which only rewards deliberate making-and-clearing of holes; all Tetris players are familiar with the experience of creating accidental holes during play and then having to fight their way back down towards them to clear up the mess. If I just rewarded the clearing of a hole, I'd be rewarding doofus play as well as my elegant style of play. Perhaps the emphasis ought to be on clearing holes promptly? So that the example I show above involves a hole being cleared in the same instant as it's created, or one piece later, so it would score lots; whereas if you left a hole at the bottom of the playing area by mistake and eventually fought your way back down to it 200 pieces later, its potential-score-value would have gradually decayed to the point where you barely noticed the bonus for uncovering the hole.