"end squeezes" - stupid, stupid game design

[MurphyRock]

Harmonix, you know I love you all madly, as I do TB:RB. The game is incredible, and so are you. You have my undying devotion.

That said, if you ever let a bug slip past in testing where you can get more points for NOT SINGING in certain parts than for just singing everything, I'm going to have to take your QA, programming, and design departments all over my knee, one at a time, and spank each of you. I hope you understand.

So-called "end squeezes" are a blight on what is an otherwise perfect game.

(For those of you who don't try to get high vocal scores, I should explain - an "end squeeze" can be used on a phrase which has a Beatlemania activation segment in the middle of the phrase. You don't sing the first part, activate in the middle, and sing only the last part accurately enough to still fill the full meter. This gets you not only the multiplier for the full phrase, but also extends your Beatlemania for longer compared to activating it at the beginning.)

[fuselage321]

I dont understand..........

[Chael]

You know when you sing a phrase till the bar gets full to keep(or add to) your multiplier? If you have enough overdrive to activate Beatlemania then you can start Beatlemania in the middle of the phrase and still have enough time to fill the bar therefore keeping your 4x multiplier. Activating the Beatlemania in the middle of the phrase may get you an extra phrase and a few more points out of it.

[Pezzers]

Ahh there is #1 on Wii for overall vocal scores. #6 here :P

I wasn't aware of this, and I don't *fully* understand it, I'll have to check it out. Yes it does seem very silly, when I sing I sing everything. I'm yet to 100% all songs (just a few more to go).

I thought end squeeze meant to activate Beatlemania at a point where it finishes before you earn more, while still getting the full phrase points. Or is that something else entirely?

[MurphyRock]

I thought end squeeze meant to activate Beatlemania at a point where it finishes before you earn more, while still getting the full phrase points. Or is that something else entirely?

No, that is a "Finesse Reverse Squeeze". Ideal vocal paths for RB2 also have Finesse Reverse Squeezes, but "End Squeeze" is something entirely new to TB:RB, since it's the first game to allow mid-phrase activation.

Octopus's Garden is the song that have the most ES's. In the best vocal path discovered so far, all three of the activations are ES's. Here's deadlystingnyc's blog where she talks about ES's in that song. I shake my fist at ES's right along with her.

http://deadlystingnyc.wordpress.com/...topuss-garden/

I think the problem that leads to ES's is this: It should not be possible to not sing all the notes in a phrase and still fill the meter all the way. On guitar and drums, playing all the notes is a basic requirement for an FC; this should be a requirement on vocals too.

[hannie3000]

What the hell. That's just stupid :/

[MurphyRock]

I think went too far to call it stupid. I was getting frustrated at trying to increase my score on some songs and had to vent in here.

Being able to activate mid-phrase is a good idea, especially considering that when you're singing in harmony, sometimes the only chance you get to activate is mid-phrase (it's like that a lot in "Boys", for instance). It's just that once you've added that possibility for mid-phrase activation, you've also added this new and ridiculous way to jigger the scoring engine for vocals.

I think I have the best solution for this: Activating mid-phrase should give you the BM multiplier for the full phrase (as if BM was already activated at the beginning of the phrase). This way, the singer doesn't get penalized for singing the notes at the beginning.

Hopefully, it will work this way in RB3. End Squeezes are a major pain.