How are You planning your Characters?

[BodhiWolff]

Okay, so for BWT to work, you have to have a "leader". That leader must always be in the band. All other characters are potential substitutions. They can be swapped out at any time, and the band lives on.

From what I understand (and correct me if I'm wrong) each character is *also* tied to only one instrument. Each character may be in a number of bands (and I believe may "lead" a number of bands, too), but ultimately they may only play one instrument.

So for those of us who want to play BWT and swap instruments, changing characters when we change instruments is going to be fairly commonplace. We need to keep track of who-plays-what.

Furthermore, if you have a "party" or "social" band or character, you might want some nice generic characters who you can access, but still keep track of, so you're not screwing up the scores of your own guys.

This is starting to look a little crowded!

Let me use my own situation as an example.

My house: Two people. Bodhi and Jodi. Both want to play. Both will play all instruments.
We want our own Band, just for the two of us. We want a Band we can play with our friends (steady band), and they'll want their own characters (steady bandmates). Let's make the BWT leaders play Bass, but we'll all want our own Bass character anyway, to practice with, and do solo with, right? We are also *definitely* doing Rock Band Nights at our house, so we want the social Band, and the generic social band characters who anybody can play --- but we don't want strangers messing up our scores, so we don't want 'em playing "our" guys, you see?

So that means we have ...
Bodhi-Guitar,Bass,Drum,Vocal characters
Jodi-Guitar,Bass,Drum,Vocal characters
BWT for Bodhi and Jodi -Leader (Shared - Bodhi and Jodi - Bassist)
BWT- Leader for Friends (Shared - Friends - Bassist)
Friend#1-Guitar,Bass,Drum,Vocal
Friend#2-Guitar,Bass,Drum,Vocal
BWT - Leader for Parties (Shared - Party - Bassist)
Party Character - Guitar,Drum,Vocal

That's a LOT OF GUYS! 22 characters! And we're only talking about 2 people in our house, and some light dabbling with BWT!

You want to name 'em, and have 'em be special, but *man* it'd almost be easier to name 'em "Bodhi Bassist" and "Bodhi Guitarist" just to keep track ... ick!

Now, if every character can play every instrument, then this all goes up the spout, and I'm completely wrong. And I'm happy!

But from everything I've read, each character plays one instrument. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

So how are *you* all planning on doing your characters, organizing your bands, etc.?

Is there a better way?

'cause this is looking a little messy to me!

[seafisch]

I believe you are correct in that each character is tied to a specific instrument. If you could switch leader, that would solve some issues, I would think.

For me, I will probably create a band to fumble through BWT with solo. Not many of my friends and family are gamers, so when they come by either (a) they can join that band (swapping in for one or more of the members); or (b) I'll create a new band and swap in whatever members of my band we need (as leader or as members - whichever way allows my "solo" band members to reap the most rewards).

[HeXcoda]

Your 20+ character combination system confuses and alarms me and makes me want to cry for mommy.

My situation is simpler, because I have no friends. One solo drummer, one solo vocal, one solo guitar. Then add my sister and her husband who are n00bs but keen in the mix, and we get one band vocalist (leader), one band drummer, and my solo guitarist as a guest player to contribute unlocked songs. So, 5 total, done.

I think this system may get some reworking in the sequel... it's clearly an interface conundrum, especially when you start taking these guys online and mixing them up in online and offline bands.

[Jimmik]

I think i'll probably have around as many characters as you. A lot >.< Of course I'll wanna explore the genres of music and express that through my gear and stuff. But yea that's a lot of people :P

[KeithSkins]

Honestly, the whole "single instrument per character" thing is my one and only gripe. I don't mind the lack of single player BWT so much, but it would be so much more fun to be able to have a Dave Grohl-esque badass who can switch instruments at will... Especially having a lot of friends that I've met through drumlines and percussion ensembles... I have a feeling there's always going to be a fight for drums. It would be nice to be able to take turns all the time through out the tour.

I'd be far much more in favor of a patch that facilitated that than for making BWT available to solo players.

[Silvernix]

Honestly man, I think you want to much. I was looking at your listen (had to check it twice to understand it), and you just want WAY to much. RARELY in a band can a singer also play Guitar, Bass AND Drums....even if they did. They usually stay in they're original selected area unless they're doing something special.

Some with Rock Band. Personally, I'm a Bass and a Drummer.... but I'm gonna stick to Bass.

[KeithSkins]

RARELY in a band can a singer also play Guitar, Bass AND Drums....even if they did. They usually stay in they're original selected area unless they're doing something special.

Rarely in a band can you get away mashing colored plastic buttons, either. ;) I'm all for a certain level of authenticity, but in the context of a game that supports social co-op, I'd love to have the ability to switch off with other people in the band and maintain my character's progress.

Is it enough to make me not excited as hell for the game? Of course not... I'm just sayin', though, that it would be a really nice feature in BWT.

[BodhiWolff]

Silvernix, I respect that in a real-life band, everybody has their strengths. Fine.

In real-life, I noodle with a dozen instruments, but I only perform with guitar/piano/vocals. I do backup with more, but I only lead with those.

But in a *game*, I am not about to let my lack of perfect skill stop me from trying my hand at every instrument. Nor is my wife. Nor are my friends.

Thus, everybody is going to want to try every instrument. And therein you have the problem. If everybody wants to try every instrument, over the long run everybody winds up having a bunch of characters.

Even between my wife and myself, we'll wind up with eight solo careers (4 each for 4 instruments, means 8 characters). Even if my wife is terrible at drums and never gets beyond the second tier of "easy" I'm not going to say "you shouldn't waste a character or game slot on that". Hard-Drive Fascism doesn't go over well in our house. I *want* her to try everything!

I'm just feeling out the community for good, positive solutions, here.

Or possibly a naming convention that is both cool and organized ;-)

[vtjustinb]

My character will look like LoWreck from Vagiant and will bring the effin' thunder--that's all I need to know. :P

[Silvernix]

Ahh, I hear ya!


My wife MIGHT try it .... but I know my sister is gonna wanna try it :_)


But I understand. In that case, I replace my answer with this:

"Saddly, what your most likely gonna have to do is make a character for each instrument jugding from the "Rocker Maker" Videos.... but cha know what? Here's hoping you don't. Cause now that I think about it, I would like to play solo career on every instrument.

[The_Vampire_Lestat]

Here's hoping I can make a goth asian chick...... what?

[tbradshaw]

I've been pondering this as well. We have six players in the house and many close friends that will participating. Our general plan is for each person to make a character for each instrument. Our primary band is going to be the one with my guitar character as the leader, since I'm almost certain I'll be playing guitar most of the time.

We'll swap out everyone else for whatever instruments they want to play as often as it sounds fun. If I want to play another instrument, I'll either just play as someone else's character or we'll play with a different band.

It kind of depends on just how much individual stats there are. If there are a bunch of career stats, then we'll want to always make sure we're on an appropriately owned character. But if there aren't that many individual statistics, then I have a feeling we'll just be swapping controllers whenever the hell the mood strikes.

[LongDarkBlues]

I was approaching it more as making a band than a set of individual characters - so you're not always playing the same guy in the band, but playing as different members of a cast of 4 members. I was planning on making 4 members for each instrument based around my 3 solo campaign characters (and a bassisst) and just letting other people jump in on those for BWT until they've had enough time to make their own guys.

[HeXcoda]

I was approaching it more as making a band than a set of individual characters - so you're not always playing the same guy in the band, but playing as different members of a cast of 4 members. I was planning on making 4 members for each instrument based around my 3 solo campaign characters (and a bassisst) and just letting other people jump in on those for BWT until they've had enough time to make their own guys.

I was considering the same thing, but... more characters the merrier, you know? And since I'm trying to recruit n00bs to the cause I'm thinking if I give them time to tinker in the character designer, making their rock god avatar, it'll bond them to the game tighter so they'll want to play with me.

Still, it's a good idea to take at least one of your soloists and mix them into every band, so their unlocks contribute to the random setlists. Best of both worlds, yo.

[Silvernix]

Of Course, I'm not really into making over the top characters. Even in the WWE games, they all look like me.... black, goatee, and short hair (...like must black people look lol). So in the end, if ya see one of those guys on the 360..... it's most likely me. :),.....

[Kylekillgannon]

Like most people, I'll start with very simple, basic characters, then as my song variety grows, I'll make more characters for different genres.....

[BodhiWolff]

I hadn't even considered that one of the characters in a band might have to be a solo character who has unlocked songs, in order to gain access to them all.

Yipe!

I'm starting to hope that the game *doesn't* keep track of individual achievements by character, in which case it really doesn't matter if anybody plays "my guy", and we can all stop worrying about it. We can just make "Joe Guitarist", use him to unlock all the songs, and then include him in every band, and let everybody play with him when they're noodling with guitar.

'cause otherwise we have to make "Joe Generic Guitarist", play through the game with him to unlock the songs, and then have him as the party-sharable guitarist.

[Silvernix]

BodhiWolff, I was just thinking the same thing.... but with the new Community site going up, I'm pretty confident that most likely, it's going to keep track of individual achiements via character.


But, yeah, I was thinking on doing the "Joe Guitarist" idea. Use him as the Main character, and I'll make other people to open up the other achievements that can't be opened via the Bass Guitar player. Such as "Bob Singer", "Billy Drummer" and "John Lead Guitarist" :)