What if there was no fan system? Would you still play BWT?

[MPeters]

What if there was no fan system?

I'm just wondering how long it will take for this 70+ page to flame out! It's just a number guys, do you really think its that much fun to play the songs to get some fans after each gig? As far as i know fans give you nothing but getting cash can get you some sweet gear. If the fan system wasn't in the game would you still complete the band world tour? It just seems that the fan flaws take away the fun of just playing with your friends, getting fans or not. I just have a question, I play expert guitar along my friends on expert drums and another guitar and we get fans but, after getting further into the tour and new venues we are only allowed to play expert or hard and not even allowed to choose medium or easy. Is there a difficulty cap as well in the band world tour? Expert singing is difficult since most of the songs are new to everyone so it's a bummer that we can't get our friend in to practice singing on even medium. If fans is only for leaderboards and a number of us really don't care about that then I don't see how the fan system is fun. There is many other flaws to the fan system then the fan cap, many 2 man minimum bands on expert can climb the leaderboards quickly yet they can't score higher in a song against a full band of mediums. Maybe the fans board is for the players unfortunate enough to have the friends to play with them, and the scoreboards for 3 - 4 man bands. If the game was just intended to be difficult then there would be no reason for complaints and that's just how the game works, and I can accept that. I enjoy the game and can't say that there is any huge problems right now. But I do believe the reason we buy the game is intended for a band of players to play on any difficulty to have fun. Of course we still can in local multiplayer, although some songs require you to beat them in the band world tour in order to play them.

Just my take on it, but I'd like to know if there is anyone who thinks the fan system is great and a fun way to play and then why, of course. As far as I know, it's just a number after each gig and the total is recorded towards the fan boards. :rolleyes:

[DesiredFX]

I'd still play it either way.

But the number has significance beyond leaderboards: there are 10 venues in the game that you must be playing at Hard or better in order to win over enough fans to unlock them. That's a lot of what has anti-Fan Cap people upset.

That and the fact that they feel like they're not progressing anymore because songs end with "0 New Fans" on the final tally.

The thing that seems to be an underlying thread is that many of them are playing with their kids as band members and the kids aren't really ready to step up the difficultly level when the Fan Cap is reached.

And there isn't a difficulty cap in the tour, but certain venues require you to play at the higher difficulty levels and thus grey out the lower ones.

[MPeters]

yea i see what you're saying and i've noticed that. my band can get fans at all venues and eventually will complete the tour when we have the time, but even if we rank high on fans we could care less about getting any higher. i noticed you can also replay gigs to get fans but much lesser than you did the first time or so. it seems to me the fan boards weigh more on the the most time played than skill or at least even out. i also don't like the fact that if you quit or restart a song you lose fans. ex. if we are trying to score higher in a song we may restart a few times if we mess something up (we've lost like 20million fans lol!). but like i said, we don't really care about fans haha. ok so we got a conformation on the difficulty cap? i remember we couldn't choose "next to you" or "outside" until we beat it in BWT on hard or expert difficulty (maybe others). I'm assuming they made easy and medium charts for those songs so I'm just kinda confused. Thanks for the reply.

[DesiredFX]

Yes, all the songs can be played at any difficulty, but at certain venues you're forced to play at Medium or Hard or even Expert. This happens even if you play a song at that venue (as in a setlist that you put together) that you opened up by playing it on Easy. The difficulty level is assigned by the venue, not the song.

And, yes, it does stink to lose fans when you have to bail out of a song for whatever reason--we did it once because the calibration was stuffed and lost a slew of fans for it.

Of course, after we recalibrated, we went back in and won three times as many fans as we lost, so it wasn't that big a deal.

Also, if your band beats a song on Hard, gaining four stars and you go back and play it on Hard, gaining five stars, you will get significantly more fans than if you four-starred it again.

[SoulScreme]

Personally, I find the fans a bit silly. I would like the cap removed or extended, however I think a complete removal wouldn't be a terrible idea. To me, the band's career score is a better indicator of skill for the leaderboards. I at least think the leaderboards should default to career score. It's just kind of dumb to try to compare when at least 75% of the boards are tied due to the caps.

[mattitude]

Playing a video game is about living out a fantasy that you couldn't do in real life.

Rock Band is about pretending you're in a real rock band, which includes procuring fans. Yeah, it's just a number, but it's part of the experience.

I'm trying to get 1,000 kills in Team Fortress 2. Am I wrong for wanting to faux-kill 1,000 people?

[DesiredFX]

I'm trying to get 1,000 kills in Team Fortress 2. Am I wrong for wanting to faux-kill 1,000 people?

Yes. Think of the faux children!

[Lucent Beam]

Yeah, I don't care either way about the fan system, so I'd still play.... uh, cause it's just an awesome game and even more fun with other people.

[MPeters]

I guess it's a cool feature to have fans if you want the whole band experience, and its not a bad one but there could be plenty of other band like features too. at some point the band will go for fans when we are done maxing our scores but it would only be for fan leaderboards.

and no you're not wrong for wanting 1000 kills in team fortress but thats only because its an achievement! you think i wanted to get 10,000 kills in gears of war just because. It was for the I "Seriously" play this game too much achievement, and to get the cool gamer picture but now i got rock band ones :) i know there is an achievement for 1 million fans but thats not even comparable to even the best player's time to get 1k kills.

[ZkDotNet]

Ya, I'd play. Playing the songs is the game... the fans and venues (and, really, BWT) is all just extra fluff 'n stuff.

[Hanika]

Of course I'd still play, hell as it is it's useless in our house, once you reach the cap, it means nothing anymore, So it was garbage in the first day of play.. A big chunk of the gameplay in BWT is ruined if your at a cap. All the pop up challenges are useless, since there's no reason to gamble for more fans, you can't get anymore anyway.

As is all this talk of losing fans and getting 3X that back. That's completely lost on Medium/Easy.

The fan system is a really cool Idea, but the execution fails miserably.

And since there's mandatory Difficulties for those certain venues, it makes it a double whammy of Idiocy. The fan cap isn't needed when there's a Mandatory Difficulty at the venue anyway.

I'm tired of debating this, I hope they fix it, I'll still play the way it is, but it coulda been so much more to a larger audience of gamers if it didn't Cap like it does now. That's a fact. I base this simply on the fact that out of all my friends, both on LIVE and in real life, they all hate the Cap.

[A Lumbee Indian]

I'd still play. I like playing this game.

[HeXcoda]

I'd play BWT MORE if there was no fan cap.

I'm playing with two non-gamers, my sister and her husband, and they're barely capable of Easy much less Medium. I seriously doubt they'll be moving up to Hard and Expert. The fan cap and difficulty caps smack us down when we're trying to have fun.

The fan cap is disheartening because after a certain point, it's like your band is no longer anything special and is incapable of winning over the Video Crowd. It's a meaningless number but even a meaningless number has a certain depressing meaning when all you see is "0 fans, 0 fans, 0 fans" over and over -- and yet, you can still LOSE fans...

The difficulty cap is worse. Why were so many achievements and venues locked behind the caps? Some challenging bonus stages, sure, but there's too much of the game stuck behind skill walls (which render the fan caps redundant, even!). It's getting to the point where I can play on medium, sis can sing medium, but brother in law cannot get off easy... so we may have to kick him out of the group if we wanna get anywhere. And that sucks.

I used to really rail against BWT for being unavailable to soloists (which I am, 90% of the time). But lately I've been having MORE fun in quickplay than I have in BWT. BWT is just annoying.

[Hanover]

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/830/830764p1.html

Check that out.

Here's a quote:


IGN: Can you explain a little bit about how the BWT is set up, since it's so different from what we saw in Guitar Hero?

Dan Teasdale: Band World Tour is based around creating a persistent band and playing setlists to gain fans, money, and stars. You can play in 41 venues split across 17 cities, hire staff to get you into bigger venues, win vehicles to help you travel around the world, and deal with challenges that bands face like "Should we sell out?" and "Is it really worth doing a charity gig?" It's essentially a slimmed-down band simulator.


Teasdale: The logic behind fans is a lot like performing in real life- you perform well, and you'll win over lots of people. Perform poorly or fail out and you'll start losing fans. If you fail out in a big venue when you have lots of fans, you're going to lose drastically more fans than if you're a garage band that's starting out by playing small clubs in your home town.

So, how many fans you lose is dependent upon how many fans you have, how you played at the gig, and what kind of venue you're playing at. Perform poorly at a small club at the start, and you might only lose 60 fans. Bomb out on a world arena after blazing your way into the hall of fame, and we're talking hundreds of thousands of fans who are walking away.

As a player, you can manage this kind of distribution. If there's a song that you know you're going to fail out of a few times, you can play it in a small club rather than bringing it out in an arena - after all, there are only so many people who can hear you in a small club.


"IGN: Why make such a big change from the tried-and-true way developed for Guitar Hero?

Teasdale: Because it's incredibly awesome! Rock Band is not a game?it's an entirely different way to experience music. Rock Band is about delivering the feeling of playing in a real band, and a lot of that goes beyond just playing songs. Things like making a band logo, deciding whether to sell out or not, where to tour, kicking out the crappy bass player, whether to stick to your old songs or not when you play in front of a big audience for the first time - they're as much of the band experience as getting up on stage and playing."

So maybe it's time to start kicking out the crappy performers in your band if you want to get famous. Sure, it's not nice...but talk to the many lead singers of Faith No More...and David Lee Roth of Van Halen. Obviously Harmonix was going for the gritty reality of what it is to be in a band. This is exactly what I expected when i bought this game because I DID MY HOMEWORK. I read interviews and reviews and made an informed purchase.

[SoulScreme]

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/830/830764p1.html

Check that out.

Here's a quote:







So maybe it's time to start kicking out the crappy performers in your band if you want to get famous. Sure, it's not nice...but talk to the many lead singers of Faith No More...and David Lee Roth of Van Halen. Obviously Harmonix was going for the gritty reality of what it is to be in a band. This is exactly what I expected when i bought this game because I DID MY HOMEWORK. I read interviews and reviews and made an informed purchase.

Yes, let's all thank Harmonix for attempting to bring the derision and divisiveness of real bands into our homes to ruin our friendships!

[topperharley]

there are 10 venues in the game that you must be playing at Hard or better in order to win over enough fans to unlock them

In the "Endless Thread" on this topic, someone expressed confusion as to why the fan cap was such a big deal as "you're only missing out on two venues".

So is it two venues or ten? If it's ten venues, then it is a bigger deal, since 10 of 41 is nearly 1/4 of that particular content. Or are you referring to setlists (not venues) that can only be unlocked on Hard or better? If that's the case, then it's not as big a deal (10 of 100+ setlists, when no songs are restricted).

I think it was HeXcoda that pointed out that the lack of clarity on what is actually off-limits is fueling the frustration that casual players have.

As to the topic of this post, my answer is yes, I would play BWT if there were no fans. At the same time, I think having a fan number is a good idea, but the implementation - as it currently exists - has flaws.

[HeXcoda]

So maybe it's time to start kicking out the crappy performers in your band if you want to get famous. Sure, it's not nice...but talk to the many lead singers of Faith No More...and David Lee Roth of Van Halen. Obviously Harmonix was going for the gritty reality of what it is to be in a band. This is exactly what I expected when i bought this game because I DID MY HOMEWORK. I read interviews and reviews and made an informed purchase.

HMX has brilliantly succeeded in emulating that gritty reality. Bravo!

That doesn't make it particularly fun, though. This is a GAME. You play games with friends to have fun with your friends. I am not gonna turn to my drummer and say "You're not allowed to play this game anymore because you suck. Go home." That's just freakin' obnoxious.

So, we're gonna stick to quickplay, since BWT is biased against fun in a manner that is, as you've noted, by official design.