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

[cowboys282]

Heh...not just on the board, but at the moment on TOP of the board on all three songs. Gotta love it. Even the official rules and the flame nerf can't stop this guy.

Dudes got skill. I saw a video of him play and he is unbelievable. I thought I was good but he is great. I wish he was on Xbox. I am not on Rockband world so I have never been able to compete against his scores.

[zage1337]

I wouldn't really say I'm unbelievably skilled. Just someone who likes to play frequently and play around with loadouts. Unfortunately I have almost no desire to improve my accuracy with hitting notes and maintaining blitz mode because those skills are no longer rewarded at all. I still have a ton of room for improvement on flame note combos but I can't really continue with those skills because of a nerf that did nothing but ruin the fun factor and overall enjoyment for the game. It kind of boggles me that HMX won't just admit that this was a mistake and change it back. The overall feedback from the forum, the blogs, their facebook posts..etc have been overwhelmingly negative. The Tournament which sounded like a good idea on paper..completely failed in the execution.

The Tournament should have never been regionally locked to the US. I know lawyers and blah but that is not a good excuse. You have to design your tournament in a way so you don't have those issues.

The physical prizes such as the guitar case and poster should have been specifically to random prize winners ala draw/sweepstake style and that could have been limited to US winners no problem. At least their chance of winning is pure chance and luck. It's most likely those prizes is what's causing the US restriction. Or just give physical prizes to the winner as a one time thing. Or make a Tournament League with elimination.

Awarding physical prizes like that per song with ANY loadout is a horrible idea and it shows when the same player is likely to win nearly every song.

You should have rewarded Tournament winners with such things as titles, emblems, in game coins, badges, free dlc codes. That way you don't have 1 player getting 20 guitar cases and you give your whole fanbase a chance to compete and win prizes. Not just a tiny portion.

You should have also made some songs locked to SPECIFIC powerup loadouts.

Scorehero did this and it forced players to experiment with different playstyles and think and play in different ways. In a game that is so horribly unbalanced like blitz is in now..a locked powerup mode should have been a no brainer.

Also Flame Notes nerfing was a huge mistake because now there is 1 powerup loadout that dominates everything. Which is Bottle Rocket/Pinball/Sync.

I honestly feel that HMX is trying to cover up a mistake they made that severely hurt their blitz fanbase. Or maybe they are trying to drive away their fanbase away so they can just let Rock Band end. Maybe they don't want to continue blitz and focus on Dance Central 4. Who knows.. Anyways there is no reason to cover this up, as the damage has already been done. They have pissed off a lot of hardcore players and left a good chunk of their blitz community disappointed. Blitz doesn't even have a good reputation when I was reading over their Rock Band facebook page. People want blitz to end and go back to RB3(judging by the FB comments people made).

Anyways my faith and trust in HMX as a Developer and their engagement with their social community has been hurt. If they want to make things right, they should just admit that ruining the gameplay by altering flame notes on a whim was a mistake and try to gain people's trust in them again. Seriously bring back flame notes unless you don't mind blitz being in the Arkanoid state that it is.

[CJHobbes]

I honestly feel that HMX is trying to cover up a mistake they made that severely hurt their fanbase. Or maybe they are trying to drive away their fanbase away so they can just let Rock Band end. Maybe they don't want to continue blitz and focus on Dance Central 4. Who knows.. Anyways there is no reason to cover this up, as the damage has already been done. They have pissed off a lot of hardcore players and left a good chunk of their community disappointed.

Umm, wow, egocentric enough?

I realize you're upset, but there's no need to stoop to internet hyperbole to make your point.

You do realize a lot of this fan base doesn't even know what flame notes are, right? Let's be realistic about this: the nerf ticked off a lot of their hardcore Blitz players and some regulars who enjoy score wars against friends. In no way, shape, or form was this damaging to their Rock Band user base as a whole.

Why? Because in the grand scheme of the RB world, this isn't even a blip on their radar. It's obviously damaged your faith, which is fine; but don't act like Harmonix' world is crashing down because they nerfed a power up in a game that I'm sure a lot of their fans don't even play.

See below-

Blitz doesn't even have a good reputation when I was reading over their Rock Band facebook page. People want blitz to end and go back to RB3(judging by the FB comments people made)

Case in point: On the "Recent Posts by Others" section of the Rock Band FB page, I see nothing but posts for DLC requests, a hardware request, and someone posting a video and stuff to sell.

Under the most recent Blitz announcement, there were 4 replies with 13 likes. The January 10th announcement has 22 likes and 7 comments. January 4th announcement has 51 likes and 20 comments (where about half were nonsense).

In fact, most of the complaints I've seen are that the tournament is US only; hardly anyone has mentioned the flame note nerf/pinball lineup. 8 people tops, maybe?

I mean, I can keep going on if you want me to. But, really, "people want blitz to end"? I'd like to see the swarm of posts you're talking about, because I must have missed them.

There's blowing off steam, and then there's being irrational about it.

[SirDavidTLynch]

The Facebook page has always been full of people complaining, and the people who "want Blitz to end and return to RB3" don't know what they're talking about. The DLC releases of the Blitz songs certainly aren't for people who already have those songs, and everything else works with both games.

[zage1337]

Well I don't want to exactly quote specific players and I probably overreacted but they were pretty negative towards the Blitz related announcements. Point is I haven't heard anything good about the nerf. No one seems to be happy by it. You either apathetic about it at all or it severely hurts the fun factor for you. It would be interesting to hear how the nerf actually helped the game. I seriously don't think anyone was button mashing between two lanes with analog sticks repeated to gain obscene scores on short easy songs. What MasterMo did was highly skillful and deserved those points based on how the game is. Band/Flame, Jack/Flame were completely legitimate combos and are arguably more legitimate from a design perspective than Pinball. Now Pinball does take a lot of skill and it can even be very frustrating at times. It took me a very long time to get where I am with it today. But the skill has so little to do with anything resembling music. I like Jackpot/Pinball though.

I still believe the nerf has done far more harm and good and HMX can simply fix all of this by just reverting it back. All the issues with unbalanced leaderboards and people sticking to one set of powerups which caused them to nerf the powerup is still there.

And I was referring to the Blitz fanbase, not just the general RB3 fanbase who only used blitz as an export. Obviously they will be apathetic to the change.

On the other hand I don't want Pinball nerfed because then it would cause the exact same issues that the flame nerf caused. Lots of unobtainable scores and such. I rather just have something that can compete with it, like original flame notes.

The game is too late in it's stage to do serious nerfing, but in future titles if they decide to do a new one I think Pinball should be outright removed and replaced with a new powerup and flame notes should have diminishing returns. That will weaken jack/flame a bit and greatly weaken band/flame abuse.

[lemonsquared]

There's blowing off steam, and then there's being irrational about it.

i don't see whats so irrational about Zage's line of thinking

I don't think Zage created a large post beause he's blowing off steam or is egocentric, but probably because he cares about blitz and the future of harmonix.

Lots of people are upset about the nerf and the tournament.
I respect your opinion, but Zage is right on this one.

[Ketchupyoshi57]

I agree with zage's entire post (#492). I think the balance of the game was better before the nerf, and it was actually close to being perfect in my opinion. Runaway notes needed a buff to be used competitively because they simply aren't worth enough points to get top scores in any situation. Shockwave needed a buff because it's more difficult to use than Bottle Rocket or Road Rage (in terms of levelling multipliers) and it awards less points in most cases. Blitz mode needed a buff because it's the one thing that can perfectly counter pinball strategies and it won't inflate the scores of less skilled players. These changes can still be made, and they will result in a much more interesting game.

The thing about the current state of the game is that Pinball is the only powerup that is truly competitive. Blast notes can get close in certain situations, but a skilled Pinball run will win in the end. Buffing Blitz mode will benefit players who focus on hitting more notes and it will give Pinball players more of a challenge without nerfing things or resetting leaderboards. It should not be this easy for zage, Magnet, myself, or any other top pinball players to win these tournaments. Something needs to exist to counter our strategy, and pre-nerf Flame Notes did just that.

[Bront20]

The Tournament should have never been regionally locked to the US. I know lawyers and blah but that is not a good excuse. You have to design your tournament in a way so you don't have those issues.

The issue is that different countries all have different rules about how contests can be run, and it's entirely possible there is no such thing as a contest that can be legally run world wide. Hell, it's already problematic to run them in the US, as different states have laws regarding them as well.

The closest you'll ever get is some of the 360 code giveaways that work world wide.

[Skippy Deluxe]

...
The game is too late in it's stage to do serious nerfing, but in future titles if they decide to do a new one I think Pinball should be outright removed and replaced with a new powerup and flame notes should have diminishing returns. That will weaken jack/flame a bit and greatly weaken band/flame abuse.

The problem is that most power-ups in the game effectively have a hard limit on the number of points they can earn. Sure, you have to chase blast notes, and you can time bottle rockets to earn more points/overdrive, but you can only get so good with them before you reach a point where an incremental increase in skill yields essentially zero reward.

The only power-ups / combos that break this rule are bandmate/flame and pinball. Both effectively have no limit on the points they can generate (provided you can keep them going). In fact, since pinball gives more points per bounce the longer it goes, incremental increases in pinball skill continue to yield significant score bonuses indefinitely.

I'm afraid the only way to "balance" this is to nerf these power-ups such that achieving these crazy scores is no longer humanly realistic (as has happened to flame notes). Otherwise, if the power-ups are balanced such that the "average" player will be able to achieve comparable scores with any loadout, the high risk/high reward strategies will always come to dominate the leaderboards over time. The only other solution is to fundamentally change the ways these power-ups work, something that is almost certainly impossible without a title update.

[zage1337]

That's the reason why I like using Pinball, Jack/Flame and Band/Flame. Because the scoring potential is more variable to your skill level and less on luck with placements. With blast notes it's going to come down to who get's the luckiest blast note placements. On a few songs where Jackpot/Blast is the best combo, the top score in the end will always be the player who get's a blast note spawned in an OD phrase or an OD phrase closer to the end which can make a huge difference.

I would probably lose interest in the game entirely if the only way you can get a #1 score is down to 100% on luck. So far 2 of the variable scoring combos have been broken (jack/flame and band/flame), and now only pinball is left.

If you look at the Tournament scores. All of the top scores on there. Every single one used Pinball. I used it, ketchupyoshi used it. There is literally nothing that can compete with chaining a lucky pinball run. Nothing. I am not even finding it fun anymore since people are just playing the same song an insane amount of times just to get a lucky pinball run and then I have to do the same. I don't want to do this. I probably won't even participate after this round unless it's a setlist song I want to defend.

There is literally no variety anymore. You either are using Pinball or you have 0% chance of ever winning a song unless a very select few songs get picked.

3 competitive loadouts > 1 competitive load out.