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Originally Posted by Bront20

Now, granted I'm not likely to be a #1, but I've got a shot at being maybe a top 25-50, which is pretty cool in my opinion, and all the scores will be skill scores (and not button mashing band/flame scores), so I'll feel a lot better.

YMMV though.

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You won't be #1 unless you use pinball.

Granted some scores you might not be #1 unless you used prenerf flame notes. But definitely not all of them. For instance, you couldn't get 300k on Charlene with prenerf flame notes.

Juggling 2+ lanes is not button mashing.

However juggling 2 lanes can be done by button mashing.
Difference is that one method rewards you with Blitz mode points while the other doesn't.

The exploit in question here is when juggling lanes with flame notes while button mashing not when legitimately juggling 2 lanes properly.

Juggling lanes is important no matter what load out you use.

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Originally Posted by MaximusDM

You won't be #1 unless you use pinball.

Granted some scores you might not be #1 unless you used prenerf flame notes. But definitely not all of them. For instance, you couldn't get 300k on Charlene with prenerf flame notes.

Juggling 2+ lanes is not button mashing.

However juggling 2 lanes can be done by button mashing.
Difference is that one method rewards you with Blitz mode points while the other doesn't.

The exploit in question here is when juggling lanes with flame notes while button mashing not when legitimately juggling 2 lanes properly.

Juggling lanes is important no matter what load out you use.

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lemonsquared and I did it. Actually we got closer to 400k with bandmate/flame notes

Bandmate on Super Guitar

Hit every single note on the drums and bass track = >350k on Charlene pre nerf

Then I stand corrected. Regardless, pinball is very comparable in score.

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Originally Posted by Epsilon82

That right there is the whole problem here. The only reasonable chance all but a tiny handful of people have to win a prize is to get chosen randomly. The very fact that there are random choices provide all the incentive that players would need to participate in the Tournaments. With that being the case, how is the game better served by only Pinball/Sync having any chance to win, at the cost of Flames being completely removed from the game for all practical scoring purposes?

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I personally feel better than someone who's button mashing with Band/Flame won't win the #1 spot. For that reason alone, yes, the community is better off while the tourney is going.

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Originally Posted by Epsilon82

You're seriously saying with a straight face that you wouldn't have played in Tournaments at all, even knowing that the only chance you have of winning anything is by random chance, no matter what the state of the game is? That you're more inclined to play in future Tournaments because Pinball/Sync is the only viable combo instead of a number of combos that include Flames?

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I'm a free stuff whore, so yeah, I might have played anyway, but outside of that, I'd probably be done with Blitz. I've got too many other things to do than to play a game where my scores can be thrashed by someone who can simply mash buttons using a single combo.

A level playing field is not a handicap, and the bandmate/flame/buttonmash combo was problematic because it was both unintended, and made scoring unbelievably high scores relatively easy, and made a single power up combo the ultimate for nearly every song.

I used 3 different setups for the tourny. One was Pinball/Synch, one was Jackpot/Blast, and I can't remember the last one (Jackpot/Pinball sticks out, but that's just crazy talk). I had fun, and I didn't feel nearly as outclassed as I usually do despite blowing past the GS threshold. For me, that's a win.

Look, your entire argument is that there's another "top" way to play so why should the normal folks be worried about flame note. The issue is, that just because someone can't compete at the top spot doesn't mean they don't want everyone playing from level playing field.

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That all said, I'd love a "powerup of the week" tourny, or having the powerups be changed per tourny. It would add some element of "figure this out", everyone would have to start from scratch each week, and it would be hard to sweat a superior powerup setup because next week it likely won't be.

I even suggested a scheduled leaderboard wipe/rebalance on a regular basis.

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Originally Posted by charliesmile

Because I want to see a fairer playing field. I want to be able to compete in the FB Blitz Tournaments, and feel like I have a fighting chance at getting a decent rank. But instead I just see scores from people using scoring exploits that should not be a legitimate part of the game dominating the Tournament Scoreboards, and I feel like I have no chance at victory, and I feel left out in the cold.
Someone on here feebly attempted to call me out on having a persecution complex, but that's not the case. Rather, I feel left out in the cold.

I'm comfortable in saying I'm pretty good at RB Blitz. I get gold stars on most songs, on a regular basis. I feel like I should be good enough to get a decent enough ranking in the tournaments. But I'm not, because I (and plenty of other players) cannot measure up to players who've dedicated themselves at mastering unfair (yes it is unfair) scoring exploits.
Is using game exploits the same as cheating? Not by definition, no. But it's not much better, and it's definitely not fair.

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OK now I can see you're point but when the tournaments only award the top 2 spots, there's still no way to compete with top players even without anything considered exploits, and it doesn't matter if you're only 20k behind instead of 200k behind.

And the fact is, jackpot/flame and ("legit") bandmate/flame are still crippled and "exploiting" with pinball is still just as dominant, so could you explain to me why you feel better that flame notes were nerfed? The way I look at it the leaderboard toppers just moved on to pinball while the hardcore players who played "legit" just got their options greatly limited.

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Originally Posted by charliesmile

I'm comfortable in saying I'm pretty good at RB Blitz. I get gold stars on most songs, on a regular basis. I feel like I should be good enough to get a decent enough ranking in the tournaments. But I'm not, because I (and plenty of other players) cannot measure up to players who've dedicated themselves at mastering unfair (yes it is unfair) scoring exploits.
Is using game exploits the same as cheating? Not by definition, no. But it's not much better, and it's definitely not fair.

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You're completely speculating when you suggest that most people at the top of the leaderboards use the exploit. You simply don't know what you're talking about. I'm personally at the top of quite a few leaderboards on PSN, and I've never used it once. I'm familiar with many other consistently high scoring players and none of them use it in that fashion either.

Most of my high scores were using Jackpot and Flame, which isn't remotely tied to the exploit at all. There are many players who generally are better at any combo than I am, but I still could compete on any given song. Now I can't have a prayer of competing without spending a bunch of time learning Pinball, which, since I actually want to play a music game and not a half-assed Arkanoid clone with segmented digital controls, doesn't interest me in the slightest.

I'm sorry, but getting Gold Stars EASILY on all but a handful of particular songs that are notoriously difficult for obscure reasons is an absolute prerequisite to having a chance to compete at the top level in this game. That's true even if you use beginner level combos. By your own admission of your skill level, you simply are not good enough at the game. That's just a fact, whether you "feel like you should be good enough to get a decent enough ranking in tournaments" or not. Your feelings are, unfortunately, blinding you to reality here.

And now, even with Flames nuked, you still don't have a prayer of ranking even in the Top 20, unless participation completely plummets because everyone quits after realizing what a broken state the game is now in. Unless you somehow are capable of using Pinball at a superhuman level, you just have no chance to compete. And if you are good enough to compete using Pinball, then guess what? You could easily have competed for the top spots on every leaderboard in the game even before the nerf.

The nerf accomplished absolutely none of its intended aims, unless Harmonix's intention was to force people either to get lousy scores or use Pinball.

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Originally Posted by Bront20

Look, your entire argument is that there's another "top" way to play so why should the normal folks be worried about flame note. The issue is, that just because someone can't compete at the top spot doesn't mean they don't want everyone playing from level playing field.

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No, my entire argument has always been multifaceted: if you want to fix the Band/Flame exploit, then do it right. There were myriad ways to do this, but because they would have had to actually update their actual game code they decided to get lazy and just kill off all legitimate uses of Flame and thus destroy the entire risk/reward balance of the game. And leaving Pinball/Sync as the only possible path to a high score.

My argument is basically this: if you can't do something right, don't do it at all.

What Harmonix did here was basically the competitive video game equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on Pakistan instead of sending in a Seal team to kill Bin Laden.

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Originally Posted by Epsilon82

What Harmonix did here was basically the competitive video game equivalent of dropping a nuclear bomb on Pakistan instead of sending in a Seal team to kill Bin Laden.

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I don't know how this thread can ever hope to top this post.

That's it, thread's over. Pack up your things and go home. Best reply ever has been made.

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Originally Posted by HMXPope

I don't know how this thread can ever hope to top this post.

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I think it involves Nazis