Things to make multiplayer better

[tofuhero]

1) Voting system. Just like the old Quake mods where you could vote on the next map to be played, Rock Band seriously needs a way for a multiplayer band to vote on song choices. This is even more crucial on the PS3 since there is no way to chat with each other. Give the leader a slightly higher vote weight so they can break ties.

2) Provide a text chat or something to give some basic communication between bandmates. The current situation is very lifeless.

3) Allow a band leader to hand the leadership to someone else, or to specify that you don't want to be a leader when you're searching for bandmates.

4) Allow people to dynamically fill in empty spots in a band. This would help reduce the amount of time it takes to find other members.

5) Give the option to hear other people singing. I think half the reason we don't see many singers on multiplayer is that there is no reward for them in doing so.

6) Let others be able to play along with a band leader's DLC. It's really restrictive to make everyone have the song, and I think if people could "demo" the songs that way you'd get more sales.

7) People you play with should be added to the Players Met feature on the PS3. Why does Rock Band not use this feature?

[nsaucdiv151]

1) Not a bad idea, but might get annoying.
2) Only an issue on PS3, really, and I have a 360 so no comment there.
3) I agree.
4) I assume you mean without going back and searching for players? Seems like it'd be hard to implement correctly.
5) You can hear people singing on 360. They just have to hold the chat button on the controller (LB I believe). Since PS3 does not have voice chat, no such luck for PS3 owners.
6) You do realize that the DLC would have to stream to all band members from the leader, right? Since the others don't have the song on their hard drive? It wouldn't work.
7) Again, works on 360.

[shadebug]

most has been covered

you'd have to elaborate more on how voting would work being that 4 players picking from 58 songs sounds like a good recipe for a 4 way tie every time

hopefully a lot of these issues will be fixed when home comes along, though why the players met doesn't work is anybody's guess

[matt9519]

I'd like a separate band quickplay lobby only for people who have DLC.

[irishscott03]

I'd really like a patch that lets you see how much DLC someone has before you go into the setlist. It's aggravating whenever you go in and see that you can't play half of your songs. It would just need to be a small little rectangle that says something like '21/52 DLC'.

[shadebug]

still no good, lets say there are 60 songs out for DLC, band with four people, 30 of those songs each, they are still not going to be able to play dlc because they're not the same 30

[Jixzer]

I would agree with most of those suggestions. The DLC one would be difficult, since all the songs "load" when you log in...and I'm not sure if they "install" after you download them. If not, I guess there could be a slight delay while the player who doesn't have the song downloads it (they don't take long to download, but after a few songs, it could get annoying).

My only real gripe with online band play is the way the other players note charts are faded out. While I understand the premise, it's annoying. It's not a kill all by any means, but I wouldn't mind a option to get rid of the fade.

[Jerick]

I've always thought that the best thing that could happen to Rock Band is to allow players to participate in eachothers DLC without having to actually own it. Here is how this could be accomplished. Create a demo version of the DLC on XBOX Live or PSN that is freely downloadable. This demo version will not allow the downloader to play the DLC during solo play, but it does place the info on their hard disk so that it can be used to play with someone that actually owns the DLC if they meet them online.

This will not only greatly increase the excitement of playing online, but it will vastly increase sales of DLC when people hear the songs they like online.

[shadebug]

I think DRM controls would make the dlc sharing impossible

or you could dlc share on ps3

[tofuhero]

Thanks for the replies.

Concerning the voting system suggestion, on the Quake/UT voting mods there were usually a lot of maps, but only a few favorites. That's generally how it goes with Rock Band as well. I don't think it would be a problem. At the least, it would give the band leader (esp. on PS3) an idea of what kind of songs other members would like to play. As far as getting annoying, I think it would have to have a quick timeout, maybe 10 seconds. Or when the band leader clicks on his/her song, the voting ends.

As far as players being able to jump into an existing "jam session", I envisioned people waiting in a queue for empty spots. When the song is over, it adds the next person in the queue to the band. The queue could be a master queue (think of a bank teller line), so that you're added to the next band with an empty slot who just ended a song. These problems only underscore that Rock Band has some user feedback issues right now when "searching" for a band.

As for the 360 stuff, yeah sorry I forgot to clarify. I'm on PS3 and forget that we got short-changed on some of the feature list. Still, I think it would be in Harmonix's best interests to fix some of the communication issues on PS3.

[tofuhero]

I would agree with most of those suggestions. The DLC one would be difficult, since all the songs "load" when you log in...and I'm not sure if they "install" after you download them. If not, I guess there could be a slight delay while the player who doesn't have the song downloads it (they don't take long to download, but after a few songs, it could get annoying). .


Yeah, the downloading to the other band members is an issue. I do like the idea someone mentioned of providing people with "locked" versions of the DLC so the songs can stream locally, but are unaccessible otherwise. That's definitely a better solution than trying to stream a low-quality version to everyone.