This Power-up Rebalancing did the EXACT OPPOSITE of what it intended to do. The new updated Synchrony combo'd with Pinball defeats the purpose of blitz and completely ruins the game. I was able to get 570k+ on BYOB and beat a bunch of my old scores by completely ignoring everything about blitz and instead mash R1/L1 while playing a pinball game. Mixing it in with Road Rage and maybe Point Doubler also helps. But this kind of playing allows you to

1. Ignore all mulitpliers
2. Ignore hitting most of the notes.
3. No need to stay in Blitz Mode

I know someone who is getting 1st on several songs sightreading by just using this combo. I wish HMX was able to do something about this imbalance. I believe this is far worse than Flame Notes and Jackpot. While Flame Notes and Jackpot can be considered unbalanced and broken which I agree on, they still require technical skill from a strong blitz player to pull of. Pinball and Synchrony requires no skill that actually matters to Blitz in legitimate play.

pinball/sync stats

I think the notion that the sky is falling is a bit premature here. I just got #1 on both BYOB and Laid to Rest without using Pinball.

What they did was make Pinball actually worth someone's while, whereas before it was totally worthless. As far as "playing the game properly," I think using any of the power-ups that HMX created qualifies. If they didn't intend for people to use Pinball, they wouldn't have put it in the game - and clearly Pinball is not the only way to top the leaderboards when I can get leaderboard-topping scores without it.

I'll stick with 'Old Reliable' (Road Rage {or occasionally Jackpot, if the song is simple and not note-dense}/Blast Notes/Super Whatever).

i kinda overreacted on Pinball/Sync combo. They can be beaten with Jackpot/Flame, but you still need to be a seriously good player to pull it off. Pinball/Sync is still really overpowered IMO. I think the boosts were a little too much. Did sync really need a 5x boost? I just don't think you should be able to get really high scores in this game by ignoring the fundamentals(raising multipliers, hitting all the notes etc..) and instead treat RBB as a breakout game.

After some extensive testing. Thanks to the powerup buffs. Road Rage/Blast Notes/Super X is now one of the worst powerup combos for high scores, and I think that's actually a good thing. Before everyone I know would only use that combo and nothing else. Now I hope people start experimenting combos more often, now that most of them are far more effective than the traditional RR/BN/SX.

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Originally Posted by zage1337

After some extensive testing. Thanks to the powerup buffs. Road Rage/Blast Notes/Super X is now one of the worst powerup combos for high scores, and I think that's actually a good thing. Before everyone I know would only use that combo and nothing else. Now I hope people start experimenting combos more often, now that most of them are far more effective than the traditional RR/BN/SX.

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Yeah, for about the first 1,200 songs I played, I just used RR/BN/SX because I knew it was highly likely to get me gold stars on my first try. The only exceptions were obvious cases like songs with long solos or really high multiplier caps, in which case I'd switch out RR with JP. It still seems like there are quite a few songs where I can still place quite high on the leaderboard (1st in some cases) using the conventional combo, but in all likelihood those are just ones that haven't been exploited by somebody using Pinball/Sync or Jackpot/Flame to a decent degree of success yet.

I don't mind Jackpot/Flame at all. More and more I've been going straight ahead and using it instead of RR/BN/SX, especially on songs that are lower in general note density. It's actually fitting that the powerup combo that requires the best actual Blitz skills gives the highest potential payoff. But Synchrony and Pinball abuse is just disheartening, because they just don't involve any skill at anything resembling a beatmatch music game.

The problem with pairing road rage,bn with as super is that RR is a non scaling powerup, while super is. You either want to have a full set of scaling powerups or a full set of non scaling powerups. Sync is non scaling and the 1k-2k you can get pure sync is worth more in the end then the pitiful amount you get using super x. Bandmate/Flame/Sync also beats jack/flame scores if you can time and path so every single note is a flame note. I.e. look at the top charlene scores.

And i kinda agree with pinball/sync, but the fact they are in the game, just like any power up and they were specifically buffed to be used more, means they are fair game. I do think the combo is really overpowered and I'm guilty of using it(not every song obv), and it does kind of take the fun out of many songs when other powerup combos are nearly pointless if you can use pinball effectively.

Pinball abuse might be viewed as cheap as it is a competitive imbalance(lots of games have something like this), but it is fair game and the point of blitz is to use the most effective powerups to your advantage, and there is nothing stopping anyone from using it. If it required no skill everyone would be using pinball just like how everyone used it on the single lane key songs. Pinball still requires really good reaction time, and it has actually improved my reaction time when I am using other combos. Even Jack/Flame I can react a lot faster now.

This is the reason why I like long songs, because those songs are a lot less susceptible to mechanic abuse.

I've just started using Flame very recently, so I still haven't quite wrapped my head around the mechanics of how it spreads. I have found myself in a situation where I hit enough of them that it seemed like every note was suddenly turning into a flame note, but I've also had some frustrating situations where I see a couple flame notes, activate Jackpot, hit it, but then it puts the next one virtually right next to it on the adjacent path and I can't spot it in time, so I end up wasting a Jackpot on worthless low-multiplier normal notes.

I generally agree with what you say about the lack of scaling with Blast Notes and RR, but I think the primary advantage it has is that it makes raising multipliers super easy. I think a lot of the reason some people score poorly in this game is that they don't consistently get multipliers up early, and Road Rage/BN makes that pretty much a non-issue wherever possible. Also, on certain songs that are shorter in length but are extremely dense with notes across all tracks, the scaling doesn't matter as much, just because you can hit such a high sheer quantity of notes that the bonus can outweigh what you would have gotten with Jackpot because the multipliers just don't get high enough to make the same kind of difference. Ordinarily, that's where Flame comes in, but on these faster, busier songs, it can be MUCH harder to keep a combo while chasing the flames because of the way the back end of the timing window is enforced, which means that invisible notes count as misses when you're in Blitz mode, particularly.

EDIT: I'd also add that I think the diminishing returns of RR/BN come along with getting more practice at effective frequent lane switching that Flame notes require. You eventually get to the point where you're so adept at raising multipliers manually that you don't need the help from RR/BN anymore, and that's about the point I feel like I'm at now. Especially since with Jackpot/Flame, missing a multiplier or two is hardly the end of the world, since the potential scoring of that combo can VASTLY outweigh those extra multipliers on normal notes, particularly when you can chain a decent JP/Flame combo early on in a song.

Yeah if I can get a 70-100k Jackpot using flame notes before the 2nd checkpoint, it will easily make missing the 1st checkpoint or so meaningless. But on long songs, especially dense songs I feel like that it hurts too much in the end. I need Blast Notes to raise some of the multipliers on the Dragonforce songs, and I think the blast bonus eventually exceeds flame, especially if you hit blasts under Jackpot late in the song and refill your OD and you can focus on your super more. Same with Panic Attack. I still think the top scores on that song are Jack/Blast. Mine on PS3 is.

I think Road Rage is completely useless pairing it up with blast notes because they both serve the same purpose. Raising your multipliers up. You shouldn't have to rely on using both, and it kind of spoils you thinking that getting multipliers up are far easier than it really is and you sacrifice so many points.

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Originally Posted by zage1337

Yeah if I can get a 70-100k Jackpot using flame notes before the 2nd checkpoint, it will easily make missing the 1st checkpoint or so meaningless. But on long songs, especially dense songs I feel like that it hurts too much in the end. I need Blast Notes to raise some of the multipliers on the Dragonforce songs, and I think the blast bonus eventually exceeds flame, especially if you hit blasts under Jackpot late in the song and refill your OD and you can focus on your super more. Same with Panic Attack. I still think the top scores on that song are Jack/Blast. Mine on PS3 is.

I think Road Rage is completely useless pairing it up with blast notes because they both serve the same purpose. Raising your multipliers up. You shouldn't have to rely on using both, and it kind of spoils you thinking that getting multipliers up are far easier than it really is and you sacrifice so many points.

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Well, I think the idea of pairing Road Rage with Blast Notes is that the Road Rage can also hit Blast Notes for you, which effectively augments its usefulness for that purpose. I think for people who really have trouble switching lanes frequently and efficiently, it makes the whole situation a lot less stressful. Which is probably why that combo is so popular; because it requires the smallest "barrier to entry" in terms of overall skill for people to get gold stars. And on those really dense songs like Panic Attack and Dragonforce, you might be surprised how high the Road Rage bonuses can get, even without scaling, because if you fire off a full bar, it can give you like 20-25K AND fill your bar back up for you if it hits overdrive notes or even better blast notes within overdrive passages.

Fundamentally, though, Jackpot is still going to be more lucrative than Road Rage on those songs because of how high the multipliers end up getting because of the longer length. I definitely agree that Road Rage is probably never going to get you the highest score, but if the song is short and dense enough, Jackpot's effectiveness seems to be marginalized to the point that Road Rage's lack of scaling doesn't hurt it as much. Those are definitely a small number of songs, however. But I can say that I do have the top score or top 2 or 3 on several songs using Road Rage/Blast Notes/Super X. Just not that many.