Difficulty Progression

[BeckRokk]

I have no worries about the way difficulty progresses in Rock Band, as every other Harmonix game I've played has been fine in this regard. However, there is one problem with it in the GH series. After a while, once the songs have been mastered, there isn't much incentive to come back (unless you are totally insane and insist on gold starring every song), but now there's a solution. After having beaten each song at "five stars" or whatever the best rating may be, the ability to sing while you play your instrument of choice should be available.

There has to be a few precautions put in place, though. Considering the open-endedness of my proposal, you should be given the ability to mix and match difficulties of each part, vocal and instrument. For example, if you've beaten the guitar part on "Expert" and have yet to pick up the mic, you should be able to set the vox on Easy.

I'm sure I'm not the first to think of this, but it could add a lot of replay value to at least the single player campaign. It may not be possible to do online when taking bandwidth, memory, and other considerations into the picture, but if it was possible, it would be a way to stand out with your "band" online, being a three-piece instead of a four.

[the_spike]

I don't really see how vocals would differ between difficulty.

Dropping lyrics or just singing the chorus in Easy would be stupid.

[BeckRokk]

I guess you haven't played any Karaoke Revolution so I'll explain.

The way things are rated in KR is a fairly simple system. On easy, you only have to hit a few select notes, but sing the entire song. As the difficulty rises, so do the difficulty of the notes you have to hit. Instead of one long line to hold a vocal sustain, the line might rise and fall to indicate higher and lower notes in a single sustain. It's not just singing pieces of a song.

[SoraRikuVGM]

What BeckRokk said. Easy would have regular voice notes, Expert would be high and low, like Mariah Carey.

[Rainer7]

Cool idea.

[vichnaiev]

Just plug the mic in and start a coop career (instead of single player) to sing and play ... there's no need for a "special" mode. Also, nothing could prevent people from doing it coop if they move forward with this and that would certainly feel like cheating.

[BeckRokk]

The only reason I suggested that it be possible on a single players' screen is so that one wouldn't have to split their focus, and just have everything sitting in front of them instead of to the left and right.