What Happened to Flame Notes In Rockband Blitz?????

[HMXPope]

Gold Stars are already devalued with few exceptions.

Can you clarify how Gold Stars have been devalued? I think this shows a bit of a disconnect between your skill level you've become accustomed to playing at and that of the average (majority of) players. For a lot of players, getting only 5 Stars is a tough goal, let alone Gold Stars.

[Epsilon82]

First of all, thanks for the much awaited official response.

With so many alternatives suggested in this thread, we simply can’t address them all individually, but nearly all of them weren’t possible for either technical reasons or because of production bandwidth. Buffing all power ups would have so drastically decreased the value or standard notes that the plate spinning mechanic would have been worthless compared to chasing power ups. Buffing Blitz mode in addition to the other power ups would have completely devalued Gold Stars and made them achievable very quickly. Tightening the hit window is a major change that would have drastically altered both the difficulty of the game and the enjoyment for the majority of players who are significantly less skilled than the forum community.

I can definitely understand the hesitance to tighten the timing window, but some of the other explanations are a bit unclear to me. Particularly the one about "buffing Blitz mode in addition to the other powerups." I know many people have suggested that all of the powerups be buffed, but this phrasing makes it sound as though these aren't mutually exclusive possibilities. Very many of us have suggested buffing ONLY Blitz mode as a solution to the particular issues in play here.

I can certainly understand the concern of "devaluing Gold Stars" in theory, but only when it's put in the context of buffing all of the powerups. Buffing Blitz mode alone wouldn't really devalue anything, since the players who would be most likely to take the most advantage of that buff are almost certainly getting Gold Stars with incredible ease as it is. I have a really hard time envisioning that many players who don't already always get Gold Stars would suddenly be getting tons of them just because Blitz mode was buffed.

So I'd be very curious to hear the rationale, if any, for not buffing Blitz mode on its own. It would solve the exploit problem of button mashing, and honestly, gold stars are so easy to get anyway that it seems beyond crazy to wipe out a perfectly legitimate powerup entirely because you're afraid more people would get Gold Stars. As if playing cleanly enough to get a high Blitz bonus in the first place isn't already going to automatically get you Gold on 99% of the songs anyway as long as you're using any valid powerups at all.

The intent of this change is not at all meant to be punitive, and we, of course, understand that those of you with the highest scores have likely committed the most gameplay time to getting really good. The idea was this, we hoped: if the best players are the ones most directly affected by this, they will also likely be the ones to figure out new, killer strategies for high scores quickly after the change. I’ve already seen some posts (and Tournament scores) to reinforce this hope.

I'm sorry to say this, but "Flames are useless so now Pinball/Sync is the only combo worth a damn at high levels" is hardly anyone's idea of people developing "killer strategies." There pretty much are no strategies at this point. Now the game has been reduced to using beginner-friendly combos to get anywhere near decent scores, only to get absolutely trounced by a handful of people using Pinball, which defeats the entire purpose of the game in the first place. I don't see what's been gained here at all. In order to keep people from abusing a very obscure exploit with Bandmate/Flame, you just basically force everyone to use Pinball/Sync instead to have any hope of competing? How is that supposed to be any better?

We’ll continue to track feedback and if it remains a strong concern for those invested in leaderboard scores we’re open to the possibility of restoring Flame Notes to their original value when Tournaments are concluded.

I beg you in the strongest possible terms to do so. This whole thing has seemed like a solution in search of a problem from the beginning, especially since the number of people who were actually abusing Bandmate/Flame in the way that is strictly exploitative is almost certainly dwarfed by the number of people who are currently spamming Pinball/Sync attempts to reach scores that also can never be reached by the few remaining plausible powerup configurations.

I'm sure it's easy to justify the nerf after the fact by citing the fact that Tournament participation was higher than anticipated, but that's a classic post-hoc-ergo-propter-hoc fallacy IMO. There's no way you can attribute increased participation to some notion of people being excited about the game being broken, at least without having any baseline to compare it to.

I strongly suspect that people would have still played in the tournaments, no matter what their skill level, just to see where they happened to rank. Average players don't expect to win these tournaments. So why should they give a crap if the highest scores are achieved with Flame Notes or Pinball?

I just don't get it...I'm sorry if my tone seems angry, but I just feel so disheartened right now.

[Danger Boy]

Well this is frustrating...

I had put in quite a bit of playing time into Blitz for the first month or two of its release. Gold star-ed almost all songs in my collection, got top 10 on the leaderboards in many and even a few #1 scores here and there. I saw a message on Twitter that there was going to be this tournament and though it would be a great time to come back and grind out some games again. Quickly noticed something was wrong with my score and checked here and saw this thread. I'm a bit late and don't really feel like reading through the past 27 pages so I'm sorry if my next points are redundant.

Flame/Jackpot is the way to go is almost every song in RBB. It is probably the most powerful combo. The thing I love though is in my opinion it is the combo that takes the most skill. If pinball or bottle rocket netted the most points on day one I probably wouldn't have played the game very long. I loved that flame/jackpot was the best because it required you to cross tracks while still maintaining your combo, something that can be very difficult in most songs.

I also liked this because I am an old-school Frequency/Amplitude player and score multipliers were the best powerups to use then to achieve a high score.

I'm incredibly disappointed that the reason given for lowering the value is to "level the playing field". To me that translates to: "We wanted to give lesser skilled players a chance in this event" and to do this you lowered the value of the powerup that took the most skill to use. In a tourney that is intended to reflect skill this seems like the worst possible move.

Also, I agree with another poster on this page. Will you always just lower the value of the best powerup in an endless cycle? Although flame was the best its not like it was so overpowered to not at least try others. I routinely played around with blast an runway and some of those scores were higher in songs where I used flame.

I have much love for Harmonix and usually roll with whatever changes that developers bring but this just seems like a terrible move. And in a game that is all about scores and leaderboards I am shocked that 3 months in there is talk of wiping the leaderboards now after all the playtime the fans of this game put in. If that happens I will not be coming back.

Thanks for listening

[cowboys282]

This response was clear. This was about tournaments. Even though most posts on this thread are against the change to Flame notes it will not change. Maybe after tournaments are over it will come back they say.

Basically they took all of our opinions under advisement and decided it was more important to grow a Facebook App opposed to listening to the core fanbase. We all know this was the wrong decision, handled horribly, and the majority did not matter. I have never seen anything like this before.

[metalkorn]

I will continue to play for fun as I have always done.

Ultimately even though overpowered the people who were dominating are going to dominate the tournaments anyway so I'm not sure what the desired result is here other then to give people hope that they might have been able to top a leaderboard? Last time I checked MagnetP was on top on at least 2 of them and I might be mistaken but I heard that he is not from the US so he can't win anything anyway... it is what it is though and I won't lose sleep.

Seems to be a few missteps and stumbles regarding RB at the moment.

[hmxhenry]

This response was clear. This was about tournaments. Even though most posts on this thread are against the change to Flame notes it will not change. Maybe after tournaments are over it will come back they say.

FWIW there are 60 unique posters in this thread, so even if most posts are against the change, it's hardly a majority you seem to think it is. This change was most definitely tied to the tournaments, and once they are resolved we are certainly willing to consider restoring the values.

Basically they took all of our opinions under advisement and decided it was more important to grow a Facebook App opposed to listening to the core fanbase.

Again, the 60 posters in this thread are not the entirety of the core fanbase. It is the most hardcore minority, and we put a lot of stock into the opinion of this group, which is why we spend so much time on the forums. We collected all the feedback from this thread and pitched countless alternatives to the Producers and QA testers for Blitz to make sure that the concerns of the hardcore forum players were represented. We didn't dismiss any suggestion or write off any proposal and considered the technical complications and the production burden of everything that came up. If one of them had been a more viable alternative we have no reason not to run with it.

Beyond that, we'll continue to track this thread and push on the higher ups to see if there is anything that we can do or any other alternatives that present themselves while tournaments are running.

[hmxhenry]

Last time I checked MagnetP was on top on at least 2 of them and I might be mistaken but I heard that he is not from the US so he can't win anything anyway... it is what it is though and I won't lose sleep.

Magnet is from the US. Whether they find a way to enter or not, we're legally not able to award prizing to anyone from outside the US so that shouldn't be a concern.

[SheSaidSheSaid]

So I guess I just won't ever use Flame Notes again. Really boils down to that. Can't wait till Blast Notes are nerfed and I have to use Runaway Notes or Pinball.

[cowboys282]

FWIW there are 60 unique posters in this thread, so even if most posts are against the change, it's hardly a majority you seem to think it is. This change was most definitely tied to the tournaments, and once they are resolved we are certainly willing to consider restoring the values.



Again, the 60 posters in this thread are not the entirety of the core fanbase. It is the most hardcore minority, and we put a lot of stock into the opinion of this group, which is why we spend so much time on the forums. We collected all the feedback from this thread and pitched countless alternatives to the Producers and QA testers for Blitz to make sure that the concerns of the hardcore forum players were represented. We didn't dismiss any suggestion or write off any proposal and considered the technical complications and the production burden of everything that came up. If one of them had been a more viable alternative we have no reason not to run with it.

Beyond that, we'll continue to track this thread and push on the higher ups to see if there is anything that we can do or any other alternatives that present themselves while tournaments are running.

Well thank you for the detailed response. At least you are honest and admit this is directly tied to the tournaments. And although there is only 60 unique posters in this thread that doesn't mean the majority is for the change. If there is data that points towards the majority being for this change it would quiet most people on this subject. I at least would love to hear of those numbers if they exist.

And once again maybe my assumptions are wrong because I have little data to go off of but my guess is that tournaments would have been just as successful if Flame notes were left alone. The same people who used Flame notes to excel are now using Pinball/Sync. At least flame notes made you play the song.

But since I am not part of the target Facebook demographic Harmonix is catering to I will have to sit back and wait until hopefully the game gets returned to normal.

[MaximusDM]

Can you clarify how Gold Stars have been devalued? I think this shows a bit of a disconnect between your skill level you've become accustomed to playing at and that of the average (majority of) players. For a lot of players, getting only 5 Stars is a tough goal, let alone Gold Stars.

It absolutely takes into account a disconnect in skill level. Regardless, the reason why most people weren't picking up more than 4 stars in the beginning was because all the power ups were locked and they had to get over this coin system hump of purchasing load outs.

So not to get sidetracked into talking about that; Once players better learn the intricacies of the game and learn to make better educated decisions on power-up load outs, gold stars come rather easy. I never had much of a problem getting gold stars with ANY power-up load out as soon as I learned how each one worked.

Using a full load out with decent play and mid-ranged educated decisions usually results in a gold star. And I never particularly had a problem with that because it offers a 2 tier system for players.
You can be the player to go after collecting all gold stars not worrying much about leaderboards. Or you can go the step further and simply attack leaderboards knowing you'll get the gold anyway, but what you are really after is topping the leaderboard.

So I guess I just won't ever use Flame Notes again. Really boils down to that. Can't wait till Blast Notes are nerfed and I have to use Runaway Notes or Pinball.

We'll you'll have to wait until March 13th 2012 when these tournaments are over for them to re-evaluate the possibility of reverting flame notes to their original value.

All hypothetically of course.