For what it's worth, my preference would be to limit each song to a specific power combination - at least for leaderboard purposes - so that players have an opportunity to practice and improve with every power, and they are all useful.

The chances of being able to balance all the powers is very low, what with them all being so different.

To save everyone's scores being lost or wasted, have 2 sections to the scoreboard. 'General' where any power combo is allowed, and then the song/power specific one.

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Originally Posted by hmxhenry

1) What do you think Flame notes should be worth?

2) If the Flame note values remain as is would you rather see the leaderboards reset or see them remain as is?

3) How often do you use Flame notes when playing Blitz?

4) How important are top leaderboard scores to you on a scale of 1 to 10?

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1) I am completely indifferent.
2) I would greatly prefer to see the leaderboards fully reset, as all the majority of top scores are illegitimately through exploiting scoring oversights. It's not fair.
3) I never use flame notes.
4) 2 out of 10. I like going for my personal best, and beating the scores of my friends, but I'm not so insecure and egomaniacal that I want to see myself at #1 on every single leaderboard.

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Originally Posted by Lowlander2

So apparently the casuals very rarely get to the point where they can reliably 5 star songs, making them very ill equipped to handle the tournaments, if they even vist RB World enough to be informed about it. And yet you'll cater to this group anyway.

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Silly, selfish me, wanting to have a fighting chance at scoreboard rankings, without having to dedicate dozens of hours to my limited free time to mastering a scoring exploit so I can boost my ego by having a score so high that a casual player has absolutely no hope of beating it, thereby alienating said casual player from wanting to play the game at all.
I apologize on behalf of all the other gosh darn "casuals" such as myself.

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Originally Posted by charliesmile

Silly, selfish me, wanting to have a fighting chance at scoreboard rankings, without having to dedicate dozens of hours to my limited free time to mastering a scoring exploit so I can boost my ego by having a score so high that a casual player has absolutely no hope of beating it, thereby alienating said casual player from wanting to play the game at all.
I apologize on behalf of all the other gosh darn "casuals" such as myself.

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The point he's making is why are we going to gear a tournament where the best score wins toward players that:

1.) Likely won't care enough about the game to be competitive.
2.) Care, but don't necessarily have very much skill/experience with the game.
3.) Would enjoy the tournament casually if they knew about it, but don't use any of the resources provided online (i.e. forums, Rock Band World, and maybe a couple other sources).

We all know that the group of people that wins top prizes in these tournaments is going to be very similar. Even after gearing the tournament to be slightly easier, the casual audience is still going to lose to players that have more skill and give more effort. The average casual player won't sit down and play Charlene for 2-3 hours in a day to try and get a really amazing score, but it didn't feel like a big deal dedicating essentially all my Blitz time to one song. Consequently, I'm 2nd on it right now and still feel I can get a good enough run for first. Making the game easier doesn't necessarily mean that the casual audience will place better; it simply means that the game is easier (and likely more boring/luck based for the people who spend a lot of time on their scores.).

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Originally Posted by charliesmile

Silly, selfish me, wanting to have a fighting chance at scoreboard rankings, without having to dedicate dozens of hours to my limited free time to mastering a scoring exploit so I can boost my ego by having a score so high that a casual player has absolutely no hope of beating it, thereby alienating said casual player from wanting to play the game at all.
I apologize on behalf of all the other gosh darn "casuals" such as myself.

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You just said that you rank caring about scoring at the top of the leaderboards at 2 out of 10. Then you say you want to have a fighting chance at scoreboard rankings? Which is it?

Regardless of the intention, the fact remains that what Harmonix did here did absolutely nothing to make it more likely for casuals to compete. In fact, they made it even more unlikely, because Pinball is way more difficult to use effectively than any Flame combo. To say nothing of the fact that it has nothing to do with the music and as such has no place in a music game except as a silly novelty.

And no matter what Harmonix does, short of simply removing tying scoring to performance in any way and just awarding a random score at the end of each song, casuals are never going to compete with the hardcore at the top of leaderboards.

The fact that only the top 2 in each tournament get any prize at all, with a few others being completely chosen at random, makes this whole concept even more ludicrous. You could maybe see a casual player sneak in if it were the top 25 or something, but still probably not, and DEFINITELY not when Pinball/Sync is the only combo that has any prayer of placing.

Has the exploit of using 2 controllers been fixed? Imagine one person chasing the pinball/sync the other spamming/playing notes. Not saying that's happening here but if pinball/sync is the only possible combo that's going to win these tournaments, you can bet your bottom dollar someones going to try it. If it's been fixed, disregard my comments.

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Originally Posted by charliesmile

Silly, selfish me, wanting to have a fighting chance at scoreboard rankings, without having to dedicate dozens of hours to my limited free time to mastering a scoring exploit so I can boost my ego by having a score so high that a casual player has absolutely no hope of beating it, thereby alienating said casual player from wanting to play the game at all.
I apologize on behalf of all the other gosh darn "casuals" such as myself.

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So all casual players stop playing because there are people who spend a ton of money on songs and time playing to get to the top of leaderboards? If that is the case then casual gamers should have gone the way of the Dodo years ago.

Most casuals that stop playing do so because.

A) They do not like the game
B) They do not have time to play as much (you remember that limited time you already mentioned)
C) Impulse purchase
D) Bought it to play the songs in RB3


The game was created for High Scores and as always there will be people doing anything they can to get to the top of the leaderboards. Been that way since online gaming began or even before that when people used a ladder system and a thing called trust.

While I think the additions of new leaderboards based on the different style of play is a waste, the thought of having a leaderboard for people who use none of the boosts would be interesting. It is as clean of a competition as you can get. It is about your knowledge of the song, leveling up and accuracy.

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Originally Posted by charliesmile

Silly, selfish me, wanting to have a fighting chance at scoreboard rankings, without having to dedicate dozens of hours to my limited free time to mastering a scoring exploit so I can boost my ego by having a score so high that a casual player has absolutely no hope of beating it, thereby alienating said casual player from wanting to play the game at all.
I apologize on behalf of all the other gosh darn "casuals" such as myself.

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A casual player who doesn't dedicate much time to the game or really care about the leaderboards is never going to stand a chance against the hardcore players who do. It's like that in nearly every online game that requires a degree of skill to reach the top.

Tournaments and leaderboards are not something meant for the casual player. If you want to dominate the leaderboards or have a shot of winning a tournament and this goes for almost any online game, you are going to have to dedicate some effort, and natural talent will also help but not required. If leaderboards were so easy to dominate for everyone and everyone was getting the exact same score with no skill then what is the point of them? There isn't.

And no those top scores are not from illegitimate play. They are the result of dedicating hundreds of hours into this game to reach a point where they can do that. Leaderboards shouldn't be reset because of that.

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Originally Posted by Epsilon82

If that's the case, then how exactly does nerfing Flame Notes accomplish anything of note with respect to the Tournaments? The people who are struggling to get Gold Stars on songs in Blitz know that they have no prayer of competing for high scores in the Tournaments no matter what powerups have the highest scoring potential.

Again, I'm still waiting for someone to explain to me how effectively taking Flame Notes out of the game (and make no mistake, using Flames under the current circumstances makes sense only if you care absolutely nothing about scoring of any kind) does anything to encourage players who can't even get Gold Stars to compete in Tournaments.

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Anecdotal and all, but:

I am not a casual player. Neither is my friend I usually score joust with (score wars and non-score wars). I can GS most songs, but there's some I struggle with. Neither of us use flame notes regularly. I don't find the Jack/Flame style very fun on most songs (I do use Jackpot or Flame, but not both together for the most part). I still put up some pretty high scores, occasionally top 10 score (I had a #1 score on a Lego song for almost a month when Blitz was released). I also would have no prayer in a tourney that allowed Jack/Flame, and Band/Flame is a flat out exploit (IE, not intended use).

Sadly, Band/Flame is probably the bigger issue with the tournaments than Jack/Flame. But ultimately, HMX felt it was what they needed to do to fix an exploit that was the least intrusive to all involved.

Edit: FYI, the Band/Flame exploit I mean is the playing 2 tracks at a time way to play.

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Originally Posted by Bront20

Band/Flame is a flat out exploit (IE, not intended use).

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Right, that's why the loading screens specifically suggest using Bandmate and Flame together.

Let's get something straight here; the only "exploit" is being able to rapidly switch back and forth between lanes to hit two notes within the same timing window. That's "not intended use". Band/Flame just happens to be the most susceptible to that. Many of my high scores were gained by using Band/Flame legitimately. So please, don't lump everyone using that combination into the same pool.