Well now to defend the method. It's not as easy to pull off as Magnet thinks it is. Knowing exactly how the exploit(or very unconventional) is done, I still can't beat any of my current top scores using it. I am extremely inconsistent using it, and another top player can't do it either. So no it's not as easy as button mashing randomly, at least for most songs. However is too powerful IMO, my score jumped by 150k in like 7 seconds while playing Hysteria when I pulled it off(still about 60k short of my high score). I only pulled it off once during the song but had I pulled it off every time i saw a flame note I would have gotten over 700-800k on the song.

depending on overdrive drain speed you can get like 250k+ points of flame notes in like 15 seconds of the song/or one flame note session which is just ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by MasterMo

All my cross-platform first place scores - all 400 of them - come from Bandmate/Flame.

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Originally Posted by MasterMo

But, say what you will about Diamaniacal's analogy, he's absolutely right about the worthlessness of the leaderboards. How many of those people do you honestly believe give a crap about the leaderboards?

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I'm not crazy about seeing someone posting about "the worthlessness of the leaderboards" a page after crowing about his 400 first place scores. I think you've answered your own question: you care about the leaderboards and people like you care about the leaderboards.

I don't think that most posters take issue with the fact that this is something that you (or anyone) discovered, but rather with how it has been presented. Consider your audience. Recognize the fact that if you're willing to push for the top spot on 400 different songs, that there are most definitely people that care about the leaderboards. Many of them post here on the forums, so you may want to keep that in mind, because the people that you're talking to are the people that care the most.

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Originally Posted by Diamaniacal

He is using a mechanic that is working as intended and being treated pretty poorly by a lot of people that tbqh have no reason to do so.

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I think there is an important distinction between what you can do in a game and what you are intended to do in a game. One does not necessarily equal the other.

Some posters pointed out the pause exploit in RB3 prior to patching. There have been tracks with talkie vocal sections where it was possible to manipulate an exploit to earn an otherwise unachievable number of points. In some instances Blitz recognizes multiple controllers and people have attempted to use this exploit to take advantage of a second player. Some players have exploited spamming the Synchrony power up. Just because you can do it doesn't mean it's intended.

The hit window for gems is not balanced the way it is to allow for this type of gameplay, it's balanced the way it is to account for the skills of average players in average settings. Tighter hit windows in playtest scenarios weren't as fun or rewarding when focusing on maintaining Blitz mode, juggling lanes and chasing powers up. Obviously there will be extreme exceptions on both ends, where some players will find that the hit window is still too strict for them and other will find that it is too lax. But it is balanced with the intent of allowing the majority of players to play in a way that is both challenging and rewarding. Taking advantage of the timing window to play in a way that wasn't intended and ultimately earn scores that weren't anticipated is pretty much the definition of an exploit.

I'm not sure what, if anything, we'll be able to do about it, but I've passed the info along to Design team and we'll continue to track this thread. If you want to contribute here, please make sure to keep it civil. For those of you that need it spelled out, that means no name calling, no insults, no profanity. Post your thoughts, leave the personal attacks out of it.

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Originally Posted by hmxhenry

I think there is an important distinction between what you can do in a game and what you are intended to do in a game. One does not necessarily equal the other.

Some posters pointed out the pause exploit in RB3 prior to patching. There have been tracks with talkie vocal sections where it was possible to manipulate an exploit to earn an otherwise unachievable number of points. In some instances Blitz recognizes multiple controllers and people have attempted to use this exploit to take advantage of a second player. Some players have exploited spamming the Synchrony power up. Just because you can do it doesn't mean it's intended.

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This is not that difficult to fix.
When you hit a note all adjacent notes disappear, when you hit a synchrony it goes away/becomes disabled for that frame.

Doing this will not make the leaderboards any less broken because of the random factor of the placement of powerups, static placement of powerups would take away from the game, I don't think it is possible to bring balance because of that, unless you go static and make the game boring and less dynamic.

Any change that is put in to fix this would require a global reset of the leaderboards, or at a minimum you would also have to remove all scores that used bandmate/flame and jackpot/flame as well, I don't think any other combination would be relevant or hold up to either one of these over time, but just completely erasing the leaderboards would be the most equitable way.

Now before any Jackpot/Flame users start howling there is absolutely no doubt that there are a multitude of these scores that were boosted by doing the very same thing that MasterMO was attacked for doing, only the adjacent notes were hit late in the process of swapping lanes to chase another flame note and not break the Jackpot. If what MasterMO is doing is going to be considered an exploit any score from jackpot/flame where this happened is just as much an exploit, the end result makes no difference.

(Son of a... had my post all written up only to get timed out or something...)

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Originally Posted by hmxhenry

I'm not crazy about seeing someone posting about "the worthlessness of the leaderboards" a page after crowing about his 400 first place scores. I think you've answered your own question: you care about the leaderboards and people like you care about the leaderboards.

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I'll admit to having overreacted with that latter post. But we need to put all this into perspective. What's at stake here? Bragging rights. Bragging rights and how one obtains them through this game.

I'm not going to lie and say I'm not proud of my scores. Because I am. But I put it into perspective. These scores are only valuable to a select few people, certainly very few outside of this community. Having high scores offers me no special benefits. I don't get prize money for placing on a song. The only thing I can do with them is brag to the select few people who place as much value in them as I do. Some people place more value in it that I, and that's fine. But put it into perspective.

In this thread, I've been told I've ruined the enjoyment for some people single-handed. I've been told my skill amounts to little more than button mashing. At the risk of sounding over-dramatic, I've been treated like absolute crap in this thread. For what? Has the response this has gotten - that I have gotten - an appropriate, proportionate response compared to what is at stake? I don't believe it has been. That's what I did a poor job of getting at with that post.

All the same, thank you for chiming in on this thread, even if that isn't what I wanted to hear.

EDIT: Just to clarify, the last few pages have been a fine discussion. The first few pages since being bumped though were, in my opinion, excessive.

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Originally Posted by hmxhenry

Tighter hit windows in playtest scenarios weren't as fun or rewarding when focusing on maintaining Blitz mode, juggling lanes and chasing powers up. Taking advantage of the timing window to play in a way that wasn't intended and ultimately earn scores that weren't anticipated is pretty much the definition of an exploit.

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You kind of contradict yourself. The timing window was made so that juggling lanes is a part of the game. Is juggling lanes abuse of the timing window? I think not.
Its working as intended.

Now its a question of how does the game determine a legit juggle and a spammed juggle and through that stopping a flame streak based on it.

The game would need to determine overhits/blitz/combo-breaks per second or measure to calculate that this player doesn't have actual control of the 2 lanes.
You could also implement a score/multiplier debuffer.

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Originally Posted by Diamaniacal

This is not that difficult to fix.
When you hit a note all adjacent notes disappear, when you hit a synchrony it goes away/becomes disabled for that frame.

...there are a multitude of these scores that were boosted by doing the very same thing that MasterMO was attacked for doing, only the adjacent notes were hit late in the process of swapping lanes to chase another flame note and not break the Jackpot. If what MasterMO is doing is going to be considered an exploit any score from jackpot/flame where this happened is just as much an exploit, the end result makes no difference.

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Juggling tracks is a legit tactic and an important part of the game no matter what power-up load out you use. I've seen a video of this being done by Magnet. As a player who legitimately juggles tracks to keep flames active, it concerns me to think that people that I might be cheating. But I don't mash buttons and more often than not maintain my Blitz through my juggles.

This loadout doesn't do much good on denser tracks as you will fail to maintain control but by doing this, if you fingers are fast enough, I supposed you could do this for even harder songs than humanly intended.

I can't do it using my chosen FreQ control style. But I suppose this would be no big deal to those thoroughly used to default controls.

That being said, I am still not convinced this is an exploit. And it being claimed to be worries me about what might happen to legit lane jugglers such as myself.

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Originally Posted by MaximusDM

Juggling tracks is a legit tactic and an important part of the game no matter what power-up load out you use. I've seen a video of this being done by Magnet. As a player who legitimately juggles tracks to keep flames active, it concerns me to think that people that I might be cheating. But I don't mash buttons and more often than not maintain my Blitz through my juggles.


That being said, I am still not convinced this is an exploit. And it being claimed to be worries me about what might happen to legit lane jugglers such as myself.

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Just for the record I am with you 100%.
I know your scores are legit, I chase you, I have beat you a few times it just depends on how things fell. The design of the Jackpot powerup relies on doing it unless you want to just outright cripple it.
I had only a week or so ago discovered this then this thing blew up.

As to the bolded red part I'd really like a link to one of the videos, I don't actually care to see it as I know but the date of it is what I'd like to see. Because if there is one from before this date I find it ironic he was one of the ones leading the charge, oh well pot meet kettle if that's the case.

I just talked to MasterMO earlier and he is indeed legit, and what he is doing is okay. I am still upset that there is an exploit, and Magnet did demonstrate that it indeed exists. The way Magnet got those outrageous scores is exploiting and I am glad that he refuses to post more scores like this, but MasterMO actually trained himself to be able to hit every note in two lanes without button mashing like a lunatic.

However it is possible to get those outrageous kind of scores by button mashing like a lunatic and I really hope people don't actually start playing like that for the sole reason of getting high scores. It's not remotely fun at all and extremely silly to play like that. I hope HMX can fix the spam issue so if you do want to achieve those kind of scores, you would actually have to juggle the flame notes yourself and play the pattern. I am completely fine with someone doing that.

I am only worried by the exploit because I don't want other people to play like that and make the leaderboards meaningless(hence why i don't chase top scores on songs with 3 lanes or fewer), but I can't do anything about it. MasterMO knows about the exploit I'm talking about it and he even recognizes it as a problem. I guess all this outrage happened because

1. I brought up this discussion after I noticed his Bang Your Head score that someone told me(who is on 360)
2. Magnet did discover an exploit that allows you to uber bandflame without the skill required to do it normally. So that is what caused this whole misunderstanding, because no one was able to achieve scores like 1.2 million on Bang Your Head and such or 800k on Buddy Holly and the exploit Magnet found allowed you to achieve such scores on your 1st run, so we linked it to MasterMO's scores, even if he didn't actually play like that.

So I'm glad we are starting to come to an understanding what's going on. I do admit that I also abuse the timing window to hit 2 adjacent notes to get extra overdrive that normally would be impossible so I can activate OD more often. I also feel like I kinda blew things outta proportion because I found it absurd and kinda amazed how MO destroyed both mine and iamchris4life's setlist scores by sizeable margins(he destroyed my Bang Your Head score by over 450k and I was the previous record holder of it) so I was questioning the legitimacy of them.

It does take a great deal of skill to use Band/Flame to full potential and I don't see how it's any less valid than Jackpot/Flame or Shockwave/Pinball and I've used all 3 combos to net 1st place scores.

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Originally Posted by hmxhenry

I'm not sure what, if anything, we'll be able to do about it,

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because I care a lot for Blitz leaderboards and would like the game to be "fixed", heres what I'd do:

1. make every second flame note only trigger one flame note and then the next flame note will trigger 2 flame notes and so on and so forth, flame notes will be weaker but not by a lot (requires reseting leaderboards obviously)

2. Diamaniacals idea seems alright

3. seperate leaderboards for every power-up combo. I don't like that idea because there will be the insane amount of 144 leaderboards for one single song but maybe there can be a seperate leaderboard for every overdrive-power-up

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Originally Posted by MaximusDM

You kind of contradict yourself. The timing window was made so that juggling lanes is a part of the game. Is juggling lanes abuse of the timing window? I think not. Its working as intended.

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I don't know what you mean by juggling lanes, but I'm pretty sure he was referring to stuff like switching between lanes to level up, as in the only way to get a half-decent score.

Even though I do agree that this is an exploit, it's extremely difficult to get used to using it effectively. You cannot consistently achieve #1 scores with this exploit simply by "button mashing". To pull off successfully you need to:

- save up your OD and deploy Bandmate mindfully (usually after you've already hit several flame notes)
- be incredibly aware of the timing and placement (left/right) of at least two tracks simultaneously, and have the reflexes to switch back and forth between them to keep flame notes going
- pick the right superlane power-up (this is incredibly important and usually requires some experimentation if it's not a guitar-heavy song).

Without some sound deployment strategy and some pretty spectacular reflexes/hand-eye coordination, Bandmate+Flame is useless. Being good with it is not tantamount to "button mashing". If you want to use it effectively, it's much more like trying to play two tracks at once. The only way to keep chaining flame notes indefinitely is to have Bandmate active while playing at least two tracks side by side flawlessly (which is difficult, but it can be done).

Yes, the astronomical scores you can achieve with this do render all of the other power-up combinations useless (on most songs--some songs with lots of solos or lanes that are inactive for long amounts of time don't generate flame notes often enough to make Bandmate+Flame a wise loadout).

But using this strategy effectively is not easy. It requires lots of luck AND skill, and sometimes multiple playthroughs are required using the strategy until you can perfect it on a song.

I don't think it should be patched out, and I sure as hell don't think the leaderboards should be reset. I don't have 400 #1 scores or whatever MasterMO claimed to have, I have less than 30. But I got them after multiple playthroughs of those songs trying to figure out where to best deploy Bandmate and keep Flame note chains going without missing any. I, too, am proud of the scores I've gotten using the exploit.

It's unfortunate that the other power-up loadouts aren't quite as useful and Bandmate+Flame is unintentionally the most powerful loadout in the game. But I do think it's a legitimate way to play and I honestly think it's much more fun to play the game this way. A lot of the other powerups are, frankly, boring or frustrating to use. With Bandmate+Flame, gold-starring is almost guaranteed (though not always--if you don't use it skillfully and wisely, you'll be stuck with 5) and chaining flame notes becomes this crazy frenetic game event where you have to move your fingers almost faster than you can see the flame notes appear on the screen, anticipating where they might pop up, having to rely on your sense of timing, hearing, and sight.

It's an exploit. But it requires a high-level of strategy and ability and it should by no means be considered cheating or an invalid way of getting high scores. It's a smart way of squeezing out the most points in a song as possible, and like MasterMO, it took me a lot of experimentation and practice to get the hang of. It doesn't "break" the game, it merely exposes what's possible to accomplish within the game's parameters, which was more than the developers intended. And honestly, trying to stay on top of a crazy flame combo is simply more interesting, crazy, and fun then, like, deploying a car that activates some notes.

In the spirit of any arcade game, I think it's great that the exploit exists and some high-level players can take advantage of it. It would be a shame to get rid of it, and if anything, it's something Harmonix should plan to design for should they ever make a Blitz 2 (making power-ups theoretically combo-able should you be good enough at using them).