A problem in Band World Tour

[Dun1a]

Rock Band is excellent and I love it, but the progression curve on BWT is not well executed for new players. BWT is the "campaign" mode of Rock Band.

This is not another "Remove the Fan Cap" thread.

Common scenario-
You buy Rock Band and have a friend, family member, or significant other join you who isn't very skilled at the game. They will play off and on with you so you will likely do BWT because they want to complete the "story". They may or may not do any of the solo paths because they probably only play the game with you at your home.

It's very reasonable to expect a brand new player to have to do 30-40 songs before moving from easy to medium on guitar or drums. That was the progression path in the campaign for Guitar Hero and I think about what it took me and a friend to go from easy to medium on that game.

In BWT on Easy, the fan cap will be reached after only a few sets (I think we reached ours in 7). Fans are the second "motivator" you see after completing a song (the first being stars).

You quickly begin to see challenges for "more fans, less money" but you are already capped out so it doesn't make any sense to new players.

You see messages from your manager telling you to need more fans to have a world tour, but after completing songs it tells you you need to play at a higher difficulty to get more fans. You start seeing these messages after completing only around 10-15 songs.

Many of the early challenges such as the jet that appear very quickly in the starting and medium venues of new cities are fan capped.

You start accumulating "grey" challenges that have random songs in the setlist. Once the new player manages to progress to a few of the starter songs on medium and raise their fan cap, all of the "grey" challenges are now open and require medium or higher. With the random songs in those setlists, new players to medium difficulty can have far too advanced songs given to them instead of progressively difficult songs. We got "Won't get fooled again" on a new medium level drummer. He failed out very quickly and very frustrated, we got the "fans lost" message on top of it.

The learning curve for new drummers seems to be much steeper than for new guitar players, while many new players can advance vocals from easy to medium within just a few songs. This causes players in a band to advance at different paces and can be frustrating for new players.

The progression curve in Rock Band's "campaign" seems to be better designed for medium level players than for easy. The various setlist challenges pace well as cities are unlocked, and fan cap restrictions are much farther into the game.

[Maggot_Brain]

Yeah, it really needs some fine tuning.

[Comedian]

The random setlists do seem to add a level of gambling to the game that detracts a bit from the band experience. My friends and I often select Hard on random setlists, knowing that if we get one of a set of three or four songs we are pretty much boned. But the odds are good that we won't - and playing really easy songs on Medium is almost worse than failing a hard song on Hard. The problem is the overlap of difficulty between the last songs at one difficulty and the first songs of the next one.

It's not often you'd be in a real band and not know if you were suddenly going to start playing a song you all couldn't perform very well. Though I actually did go see They Might Be Giants on a tour where they would deliberately ask the audience for a song they didn't know and then attempt to play it. The night I was there it was Electric Avenue. After a bit of discussion they pulled of a pretty good cover, though no one in the club seemed to know the lyrics outside of the chorus. 8)

[Dun1a]

I hope they are working on a Wii version and can smooth it out for that console. After raving about the game to my brother, he wants it so he and his son can play on their Wii.

My in-laws played the game with us over the weekend and had fun, but the annoyances were noticeable for beginners. My wife and her parents even tried to do that band name: The Beginners. They goofed up and ended up as "The Begonners"


Speaking of band names............ Why can't I name my band "Username Password" ???!!

"Password" in a band name seems to be content filtered. It told me it wasn't "classy" and couldn't be transmitted to xbox live.

[davidshek]

"Password" in a band name seems to be content filtered. It told me it wasn't "classy" and couldn't be transmitted to xbox live.

Because it contains the letters a.s.s.

I would imagine that's why, anyway.

Which I think is funny, cause I can name at least a dozen local bands in my area that have completely unclassy names...Maybe that's why they haven't made it big yet! Nah, it's probably cause they suck...

[Quyrean]

That is a very good summary. I too felt the progression was way to steep for new players, drums espically. I really want to play the entire band world tour on easy. Its so much fun, but Im not ready for medium yet.

[Dun1a]

The random setlists do seem to add a level of gambling to the game that detracts a bit from the band experience. My friends and I often select Hard on random setlists, knowing that if we get one of a set of three or four songs we are pretty much boned. But the odds are good that we won't - and playing really easy songs on Medium is almost worse than failing a hard song on Hard. The problem is the overlap of difficulty between the last songs at one difficulty and the first songs of the next one.

Agreed.

The random setlists are a great idea and I usually like a change up, I just think they should restrict the range a bit, and introduce them to the player later in the game. For new players getting hit with the upper range songs can be an undeserved failure, while higher level players can sometimes get bored with the lowest level stuff.

[tbradshaw]

While I agree that this is not another "remove the cap" thread, this conversation has been discussed in detail in those threads.

[sporkBrigade]

I don't think this game was meant to be played at Easy. Previous games were the same way. There is always a push to get you out of Easy to at least Medium if you truely want to play through the game. Now of course, for the beginner, Easy is a very important step. But it's still just that, a step. Not the whole game.

The fact is this, there is something that happens when you go up in difficulty. One, a feeling of accomplishment. But almost more important then that is the fact that you are 1 step closer to reproducing the music accurately. Guitar Hero was a fantastic example of this. Every step up the difficulty ladder was one step closer to playing every note of the song. It's a very interesting feeling. Everyone I ever knew who stuck with Guitar Hero and learned to play at least Hard always described the feeling as the game getting better, or more fun. Expert is a different beast, but at least getting to Hard was always described to me as a better experience then playing at Medium. You really started to be tricked into thinking you were playing the song.

Another example to describe what I'm talking about is when I get guitarists to play Guitar Hero. They HATE easy. Again, they still have to start there, just to learn the basics. But hitting one note that represents 12 drives them insane. The higher up they move, the more fun they have, just because the feeling becomes more accurate.

Fact is, I think the folks over at HMX have gotten the same impression. They want you to head up the difficulty scale. Not for your ego, and definitely not to punish you. But because the game is better there.

What I'm trying to establish here is a reason to require at least Medium for the vast majority of the content within the BWT. You may be correct, and they botched the speed of the progression. But I disagree that the entire experience should be open to Easy. It just wouldn't be as good of a game.

Of course, this is alway the place to point out that you can play any song in the game on easy on quickmode, and the songs are the real "content" of Rock Band. Quickplay is the true party experience. WBT is a campaign mode. You don't play campaigns at parties.

[Dun1a]

I don't think this game was meant to be played at Easy.

The game was certainly meant to be played on easy to a certain degree. I'm giving feedback on how easy and beginner content has been implemented in the game.

Fact is, I think the folks over at HMX have gotten the same impression. They want you to head up the difficulty scale. Not for your ego, and definitely not to punish you. But because the game is better there.

Of course, but my feedback is that the pacing for new players going up the difficulty scale should be improved for better gameplay.

What I'm trying to establish here is a reason to require at least Medium for the vast majority of the content within the BWT. You may be correct, and they botched the speed of the progression. But I disagree that the entire experience should be open to Easy. It just wouldn't be as good of a game.

Opening up all of the content on easy is not what I posted about. That is from another thread. In fact, I think some parts that are currently open should be restricted further on easy (such as random setlists and challenges). It's a flaw when a player is given a challenge to get more cash in lieu of fans (or vice-versa), when the player cannot accumulate any more fans. The option then is not a real option, and is therefore not a challenge. It's an issue of polishing the gameplay a bit.

Of course, this is alway the place to point out that you can play any song in the game on easy on quickmode, and the songs are the real "content" of Rock Band. Quickplay is the true party experience. WBT is a campaign mode. You don't play campaigns at parties.

Again, the "party" thing is from other threads. People certainly do have friends and family who are new to Rock Band who will play campaigns with them. BWT is designed around having 2-4 people in front of your TV playing that part of the game. In fact, having other players is the first requirement to even start the campaign. The pacing for different instruments should be evened out, and the pacing for newer players can be improved.

I read some of your other posts on those "other" topics as well. I'm really not sure what your point is supposed to be. In some your points you appear to say that beginner progression should be uneven or not fun in order to make a player move to a higher difficulty. You also seem to put forth the idea that BWT should not be played by anyone with differing skill levels when that is designed in and the option is given at the start of every single setlist. I'm not trying to bash, but I can't seem to make any sense of what you are trying to say.