BWT Clarification: Optional content vs. Progression

[sporkBrigade]

In every game there is optional content that is there for a challenge and no other reason. Ruby Weapon, time trials, collect every star. Unfortunately, Harmonix hasn't made this as clear within Rock Band's very popular World Tour, but anything that requires Hard level to play, or fans within a range you can only attain by playing at Hard, is an optional unlock or challenge. It's not "Progression".

Progressing through and beating the World Tour involves all the various battle of the bands, getting into the Hall of Fame, and the Endless Setlist. If your goal is to "complete" or "beat" the World tour, that's it. You're never required to move beyond Medium.

Tokyo is optional. Just get over it. It's an optional challenge to unlock it, and everything in there are more optional challenges. If you don't care about the challenge of beating hard level setlists, there's nothing in Tokyo for you.

If there is a setlist called "Guitar Legend" that contains the 6 hardest guitar songs, and you have to play at least at hard level, obviously it's a challenge. It has no other purpose to exist in the game. If you don't want that challenge, why do you care whether you can access it? If you want to play those 6 songs, then go to quickplay and play those 6 songs back to back. There is no difference, other then the hard requirement, which makes it a challenge.

Another clarification. In all the analogies being thrown around, the venue is being compared to the "level" of another game. Not only is this Apples to Oranges, but this is false. The game "level" is the song itself. The notechart. The venue is fluff, eye candy, whatever. The venue is unlockable armor, new weapon skins, or whatever stupid analogy you want to throw around. So comparing a final boss fight to playing in Tokyo is just false.

If you want to play the game levels, go to quickplay. If you want to "Beat" the world tour, complete the endless setlist. If you want difficult challenges that are there literally for no other reason then to be difficult, then try and unlock Tokyo. That's how the game breaks down, and there's nothing elitist about it.

By the way, my 4 member band is stuck at 600K fans because of the Hard fan cutoff, and we refuse to drop to two expert guitarists just to bypass it. We're stuck trying to get everyone to expert, and we're having a blast doing it. Wish us luck, I think we're gonna be awesome!

Edit: As a note, the credits roll after the Hall of Fame. So if "beating" the game is your thing, think no further then that. Even the Endless Setlist is itself a challenge, though it only requires Medium. God I hope I can talk someone into doing it with me.

[SoulScreme]

You're "stuck" having a blast? That makes no sense.

[tbradshaw]

Great post! I would offer a change and a couple additions:

Beating the Hall of Fame Induction Concert is "beating the game" (the credits play afterword, afterall). The "Endless Set List" is like a sweet "plus game". (A "plus game" is continuing content after beating the game, like in Paper Mario where there's lots of stuff after you finish the story.)

Stars are your notoriety that is the balanced for the different difficulties. Fans are your notoriety that span all difficulties.

[ZkDotNet]

You're "stuck" having a blast? That makes no sense.
Why not? Most of us are having fun by just playing the songs. The fans 'n venues are fluff. Neat and all, but still fluff. Are you not having fun playing the songs?

[ubikkibu]

"Stuck" stays in quotes. We're in a similar situation, and yes, we're having a blast with it. Keeping the band together until everyone can rock harder is the way to go--Rock Band is about having fun.

[Ultrace]

You're "stuck" having a blast? That makes no sense.
You can be locked at a lack of progression with regard to fans or even venues and yet still enjoy playing songs, earning money and stars. You can have a blast without progression. Doing Quickplay is a blast. BWT, at its worst, is at least as good as Quickplay with the bonus of earning money and stars.

[sporkBrigade]

You're "stuck" having a blast? That makes no sense.

Very much. Right now we're heading through every venue we've already unlocked playing all the setlists we'd sort of skipped over. Every time we hit up a select a setlist, we pick some songs we know well, and we all up the difficulty past what we know we can nail. It's very hit miss, but the amount of improvement we've seen since Thanksgiving is ridiculous.

Now of course I see that not everyone would enjoy this. But then, it's optional, so if it's not for you, don't sweat it. I could never stomach trying to beat any of the weapons in FF7. That loses me a lot of gamer cred in a lot of circles, but I played that game the way I wanted. And all I cared about was beating Sephiroth. To each their own.

[sporkBrigade]

Great post! I would offer a change and a couple additions:

Beating the Hall of Fame Induction Concert is "beating the game" (the credits play afterword, afterall). The "Endless Set List" is like a sweet "plus game". (A "plus game" is continuing content after beating the game, like in Paper Mario where there's lots of stuff after you finish the story.)

Stars are your notoriety that is the balanced for the different difficulties. Fans are your notoriety that span all difficulties.

Great point. I always thought of the Endless Setlist as the ending because of a quote from a dev before the game was out. But having beaten the Hall of Fame, you're right, it was very "final boss" ish. And the credits were awesome. :D

[PunkJr]

Awesome post!! I'm another person "stuck" enjoying the game at lower difficulties. "Foreplay/Long Time" kicked my butt on Medium on the drums the other night & my girlfriend had to save me twice, but we're still really enjoying the different things we CAN do right now.

She was afraid that she was going go hold me back with the fan cut off, but we're both working on getting better to be able to progress. :)

[Quastor]

Someone using rational thought... I never thought I'd see the day.

[moneal2001]

The problem was that BWT was advertised as not having an end but the fan cap is really an end. I myself don't have a problem with locked venues or whatever but the fan cap is the main problem. BWT does end.

[ZkDotNet]

The problem was that BWT was advertised as not having an end but the fan cap is really an end. I myself don't have a problem with locked venues or whatever but the fan cap is the main problem. BWT does end.
Why do you care about fans? Past medium, the only thing they do is open up a couple venues.... which you have no problem with locked venues.

How is that an end? You can't play songs anymore? (For those following at home, playing songs in Rock Band *is* the game.)

[PunkJr]

playing songs in Rock Band *is* the game.

Exactly. When my friend Josh & I hit the medium wall, we just kept going for stars & cash. We still had a blast & ended up doing the Hall of Fame. :)

[Smoky_McAshtray]

Not only is this Apples to Oranges, but this is false.
I don't think Apples will appreciate your comment about him! ;)

On a serious note, I couldn't have worded this any better. Excellent job. And as for the guy that questioned your having a blast being "stuck", contrary to popular belief, not everyone in this day and age has fun with instant gratification. Some of us actually have fun being challenged rather than spoon fed (AKA playing on an easy difficulty just because you can beat it)

[sporkBrigade]

The problem was that BWT was advertised as not having an end but the fan cap is really an end. I myself don't have a problem with locked venues or whatever but the fan cap is the main problem. BWT does end.

It does? Weird, me and my band must not have noticed. Of course, there was this one part where we stopped getting fans. But then we started going back through our previous venues and doing all the setlists that had the word "new" next to it. That took a REALLY long time though, and no fans were involved. Just stars. And then those battle of the bands kept popping up, and we kept doing those, since they only required Medium. After a while we were in the Hall of Fame. Maybe that's what you're talking about? The credits rolled and everything.

Though it's weird... We're still playing. There's still more setlists that say "new" next to them, and it just doesn't seem to stop. We're all on Hard now, and we unlocked all the venues. We're not getting fans again. We're at 600,000, to be exact. But for some strange reason, despite what you're saying, we're still playing. Still beating setlists. We're starting to pop up to Expert on certain songs, though. The ones we know really well. That list is growing every time we play. But really it's just for fun. We're not required to play at Expert for anything. I mean, unless we want more fans. But those don't seem to matter for some reason.

[HeXcoda]

Here's what I think would help a LOT...

Someone needs to write up a list of every venue and every setlist challenge within that venue, and what difficulty / fan cap they unlock on. Post it here, post it to GameFAQs, whatever.

Then we'll have some perspective on what lies ahead. On how much material is ACTUALLY locked away, and how much is available to us. If I knew "It's just these five bonus challenge lists" then I'd go "Oh, well, no big whoop" and be happy.

It's hard to get a sense for exactly how much of BWT is actually sealed away... words like "bonus" and "optional" are nice but getting perspective on how much of it is optional is another matter. I've played games where practically half the stupid game is "optional bonus" material! It makes the victory over the supposed ending a hollow one indeed.

So, where does Rock Band fall on the spectrum..? Exactly how much content is unavailable? I'm not expecting it all to be, that's just silly. (Ruby Weapon, et all.) But I'd like the vast majority to be.

[sporkBrigade]

Here's what I think would help a LOT...

Someone needs to write up a list of every venue and every setlist challenge within that venue, and what difficulty / fan cap they unlock on. Post it here, post it to GameFAQs, whatever.

Then we'll have some perspective on what lies ahead. On how much material is ACTUALLY locked away, and how much is available to us. If I knew "It's just these five bonus challenge lists" then I'd go "Oh, well, no big whoop" and be happy.

It's hard to get a sense for exactly how much of BWT is actually sealed away... words like "bonus" and "optional" are nice but getting perspective on how much of it is optional is another matter. I've played games where practically half the stupid game is "optional bonus" material! It makes the victory over the supposed ending a hollow one indeed.

So, where does Rock Band fall on the spectrum..? Exactly how much content is unavailable? I'm not expecting it all to be, that's just silly. (Ruby Weapon, et all.) But I'd like the vast majority to be.

Good question. Ball park would probably be about a 10% of the total setlists require hard. Hard setlists tend to be around 6 songs or so. The longer Marathons tend to be Medium level, so I don't know if those count for more since they contain more songs, but take that how you will.

Any Venue that requires Hard to unlock it contains only Hard content. There may be an exception to that, I'll double check, but I feel pretty good about that statement. If there is an exception, it'll involve a venue that requires fans not that much over the Medium cap. Tokyo, and the other venues that are deep into the Hard level of fans definitely contain exlusively Hard level content.

I can't think of a Marathon that requires more then Medium, so I'm not sure how that counts. The Marathons are the longest setlists, so are they a bigger percentage? Or a setlist is a setlist, no matter the size? I'll do my homework when I get my 360 to myself when no one is insisting we play.

[sporkBrigade]

Actually, slight hitch. To know the fan requirements for each venue, you need to be below it. We've unlocked every venue at 600k fans. So I either need to lose all our fans, which would get me kicked out of the band, or one of you folk stuck at medium needs to pony up and PM me a list of every venue you're locked out of with a fan requirement. Now, the getting kicked out of the band might be an awesome way to improve the authentic feeling of being a Rock Star, but I haven't even tried Heroine yet. So until then, or at least a sex scandel, I refuse to go there.

This is very key. It has to have a fan requirement over 260k. If it's under that, then you can unlock it at Medium. Venues are also locked out with star requirements, and those also you can unlock at Medium with some time. So it has to require more then 260k fans, or it doesn't count.

For Gigs that just flat out require you to play at Hard, fans or no fans, I can get a list of those together over the weekend. Someone let me know about the venues!

[HeXcoda]

If it's 10%, "Pfff!" say I. I'm getting 90% of BWT and that's fine with me!

Still, an in-depth investigation's called for. Gather your data and achieve Internet Fame! Be an hero to million!

[the_spike]

The thing is that people think that Harmonix designed Rock Band to be beat in a month. They didn't, which is why there are fan caps. There won't be this much complaining when Rock Band 2 rolls around because you'll all be able to play on Expert or at least Hard.

It works like a real band. In real life you have to work your way up to playing those tough songs, you can't get by with hitting half the notes at a real show. In Rock Band you also work your way up to playing on Expert, there isn't any sort of shortcut, you just have to be good just like real guitar.

Hell, in 10 days my entire band including me can kick almost any song's ass on Expert Guitar, two of us can get by nearly all songs on Hard Drums, we all can all get 95-100% on Medium Vocals and half of us can do Hard Vocals for about half the songs. One of us can even play Expert Drums.

[Electric_Zen]

I'm getting the impression that BWT is pretty freaking ginormous.

This game has been out for a week and a half, and the highest published gamerscore (http://www.mygamercard.net/leaderboard.php?gt=&g=350&z=&c=&x=58&y=21) is 785.

What's holding everyone back? Not the endless setlists. Not the head-to-head achievements.

It's all the 'Big in [City]' achievements. I can't find anyone who has them all.

What is so difficult about racking these up? There are bands out there with millions of fans, so that's not the barrier, right?

[HeXcoda]

There won't be this much complaining when Rock Band 2 rolls around because you'll all be able to play on Expert or at least Hard.

For many people, sure -- but there are some who will simply never reach those levels. Non-gamers, casual gamers, family members, kiddies... these are people you want to have fun with and you want them to have a good time, but you know they're gonna hit a Skill Wall early on and stop. Not everybody has the time to practice for hours and hours on end to grind their way up to maximum difficulty and start banging out The Who on Expert.

Since Rock Band is aimed at getting people to play games who might not normally play games, it makes sense to be inclusive... to not restrict them. Now, if it's just 10% of the content that's locked and it's all "Show us your SKILLZ" bonus content, then big deal -- non-gamers wouldn't care about that stuff anyway. But if there's good stuff in there that COULD be fun for them if not for the Enforced Skill Wall Cap, then that's bad news.

I'm very happy for your band being able to climb the skill wall that fast... but let's keep in mind the ocean is vast and blue.


It's all the 'Big in [City]' achievements. I can't find anyone who has them all.

What is so difficult about racking these up? There are bands out there with millions of fans, so that's not the barrier, right?

And THAT is my concern about the fan cap. If you simply can't access all the events in the basic cities, if those are fan-locked, then most people are never going to get those achievements. And that's sad. I'm stuck at a fairly mediocre 200 gamer points on this thing because so many achievements are BWT Gods Only.

I wouldn't say there should be no fan caps, no skill caps -- but let's be reasonable about them. How much of your game do you want the majority of your audience to never get to play?

[topperharley]

Be an hero to million!

Micah...? ;)

[HeXcoda]

Micah...? ;)

"Being a hero is what killed your father, Micah!"
"...uh, no, mom, you partying it up in Las Vegas and him getting shot trying to drag you out of there is what got him killed."

...Anyway. Rock Band! Someone make an FAQ already. :D

[sa_nick]

Yeah, what that guy said *points at OP*