Get To Know The Song Before Going Online

[SoulScreme]

So, my roommate and I played online tonight. I sang, he handled lead guitar. We picked up another pair of folks for bass and drums. They were cool, but clearly had no clue what songs we were picking were like. For instance, I wanted to give the vocals on Run to the Hills a try. Our drummer had almost failed out of Sabotage on hard. They insisted on doing Run to the Hills on hard was well. Clearly they had no clue how much more difficult that song is than Sabotage. this happened 3 or 4 times. So, yeah, if you're playing online please give the track list a quick play through so you know what songs to not try on hard/expert.

[o0MeTaL0o]

Or play through the Solo cerrer first to find out the difficulties.

[HeXcoda]

Agreed. Also, don't be afraid to drop it down a difficulty notch if you're constantly failing out on Hard/Expert! So what if you're on Medium? Are you afraid we're going to laugh at your e-peen? I'd rather have a bandmate that's nailing combos and keeping things rolling that one I have to constantly be ready to swoop in and save because he feels he has to "hang with the big dogs". I promise not to mock you for your lower diff, considering I can't even play the damn drums, so anybody who can gets props in my book.

[SoulScreme]

Agreed. Also, don't be afraid to drop it down a difficulty notch if you're constantly failing out on Hard/Expert! So what if you're on Medium? Are you afraid we're going to laugh at your e-peen? I'd rather have a bandmate that's nailing combos and keeping things rolling that one I have to constantly be ready to swoop in and save because he feels he has to "hang with the big dogs". I promise not to mock you for your lower diff, considering I can't even play the damn drums, so anybody who can gets props in my book.

Yeah, I mean, I can only handle a few songs on hard on drums. And I was on Medium vocals, so it's not like it would have been out of place.

[logicalnoise]

bigger problem is people dropping out. 4/7 players I faced tonight dropped. I reported everyone as cheating but still people. On online co-op I found a grop who were playing on easy/medium(I wa son drums). then found a couple guys just jamming on hard and expert. Co-op equals fun competitive equals angry kids I guess.

[Eman311]

Some people are worried that online, if they play drums on medium the host will just kick them or drop them.

I would know, it happeend to me the first few days I played online, and this was with getting 85-95% on every song.

[HeXcoda]

Some people are worried that online, if they play drums on medium the host will just kick them or drop them.

I would know, it happeend to me the first few days I played online, and this was with getting 85-95% on every song.

Weird... I haven't had this happen.

But I'm playing Band Quickplay, not Tug of War... people are generally nicer to each other and just wanna have fun when they aren't being cutthroat rank mongering bastards. :)

I'm hoping the Rock Band community will be less Serious Business than the Guitar Hero community is... that we'll support people who play any difficulty and be less obsessed with maxing out everything...

[Odwill]

Weird... I haven't had this happen.

But I'm playing Band Quickplay, not Tug of War... people are generally nicer to each other and just wanna have fun when they aren't being cutthroat rank mongering bastards. :)

I'm hoping the Rock Band community will be less Serious Business than the Guitar Hero community is... that we'll support people who play any difficulty and be less obsessed with maxing out everything...

Most people are cool in co-op but there are still the tools that are around calling people noobs for playing on medium. I was playing with a group the other night on hard/expert drums. Then the guitarist selects Run to the Hills. I have beaten it on Hard but I wanted to be safe since I was playing with other people so I dropped to medium and the the guitarist starts yelling **** in voice, calling me an f----ing noob. We play the song, I score 98% then I get kicked. I bet that he never even played that song on the drums let alone on hard/expert, it is a pain in the arse. So anyway, I just started making it a point to ask before we get started if it is ok if I play some of the harder songs on medium because I feel more comfortable with them. If the others don't have their mikes on then oh well.

[DesiredFX]

Last night, I was online with my guitar controller (PS3 server), playing primarily Bass because only my upstrum works.

I'm good enough with the guitar controller to play most Bass parts on Hard or Expert, and I honestly could give a fig what difficulty anyone else plays at--if you play it correctly, it all sounds the same, anyway.

But what I noticed as I played was that people would select Medium and then see that I was playing Hard or Expert and bump up their difficulty level, as though they weren't going to let me show them up, or something.

First of all, the primary difference between Bass on Hard and Guitar on Medium is the Orange button. The Bass parts really are that easy on most of these songs, so stepping up your Guitar difficulty doesn't really "even things out" between the two parts.

Second, I'm too busy watching my note chart to see whether you're acing yours or screwing it up. Since I can't actually see you play, since you're probably hundreds of miles from me, picking a harder difficulty isn't going to impress me. I suppose if you're playing with your girlfriend and she's watching, you might get five extra minutes of...never mind.

Finally, when this happened, I spent most of my energy to save the Guitar player from failing--generally before he dropped out of the game, but sometimes, I didn't get there in time. This prevented me from using the energy for something really useful, like boosting our band multiplier when the drummer or singer triggered overdrive.

People need to realize that there's no point in using co-op mode as a place to "measure your manhood."

/rant

[HeXcoda]

People need to realize that there's no point in using co-op mode as a place to "measure your manhood."

Well, there IS an upside to that. If not for people encouraging me to try Hard, and then try Expert, I might've stayed in my vocals comfort zone of Medium for quite some time. That egging on to ramp it up helped me.

But it has to be good natured egging on. Not some competitive drive, but encouragement and support, and no whining if someone who bumped it up does badly. Problem is when people see it as some sort of contest, like you said, and the whole thing collapses in sour feelings as a result.

[DesiredFX]

I'm perfectly happy with someone wanting to step up the challenge level of the game. My issue was with people doing it before they had a solid grasp of the lower difficulty levels, and doing it just because they saw I was playing on a higher one.

As I said, I just love to play--you wanna play on Easy, that's perfectly fine with me. There was a time when I couldn't play GH on Hard or Expert, so I'm not gonna trash someone who's new to the concept of rhythm games (especially drummers) just because they're at a lower point on the learning curve than I am.

For all I know, most of these people will be surpassing my skills, which hit a plateau some time during the GH2 Expert set list.