Compilation of questions answered by HMX (indexed)

[Sayburr]

This is a Compilation of questions answered by HMX.

It is NOT a thread to ask questions in.

After seeing complaints about HMX not answering questions, the forums were searched and the following answers were found.

If you see a post where HMX answers a question, post it in here and I will try my best to keep the index up to date.


INDEX:

Future after RB3

So, what disc based game can we expect for 2011? RB4? A band game?

Q: So, with the release of disc songs as DLC, is this the countdown to the end?

2012 - Rock Band Blitz!

Hey, has anyone heard of Harmonix flat-out saying that Rock Band Blitz is the last Rock Band game?

Communication with HMX

What are the best ways to keep up with Harmonix? Facebook? Twitter? Just give me a list!

Why don’t you pay attention to me?!

Why are we always in the dark on things? Why can’t HMX answer our questions?

Why can’t HMX just put a post in the announcement forums that is updated with all of the issues

Relationships with Labels and Bands

Question: If everything is licensed, paid for, and ready to go, what do the labels care [about DLC/Song leaks on the internet]? Labels have more things to do than read forum posts.

Songs in general

The teiring for songs seemed to be messed up, what’s up with that?

Harmonix doesn’t know what they are doing with pro-charts. Why don’t they play like the tabs I have gotten off the internet?

Why is HMX so pro-censorship?

Couldn’t you offer M rated songs to those who want them? If I were HMX, I would offer the choice.

Where is all of the good music?

Why no Double Bass (Expert +) in Rock Band 3? [update: RBN songs will be allowed to chart Double Bass, click here to see list of songs]

What is this I hear about a 3,000 song limit in Rock Band 3?

So what exactly happens if you have 3,001?

How about some covers for bands unwilling to license music, for those with missing masters, or for those who don’t want HMX to have the master tapes?

Does HMX even care about 'Request A Song' anymore?

DLC

Just of curiosity how far do you plan for DLC releases? This is just pure curiosity about how far ahead you guys have stuff planned.

Harmonix, why will you not tell me when [my favorite band] is coming to Rock Band? Is it about money or something else?

Dear HMX, why the live songs and the re-records? I think people would like to know the 'why' a certain song recording was used given Henry's possible reasons in the above link.

Why is there sometimes a delay in getting songs released on different consoles?

Hey, I bought songs ["Rock and Roll Star" and "Hier Kommt Alex"] as DLC that I can’t play anymore, what is going on?

What the hell? Only 12 Bon Jovi songs and three of them repeats?

The DLC being released is boring, we need more Metal! Even people at ScoreHero are asking for more challenging DLC

All, right! I heard a rumor that Metacallica’s Master of Puppets is coming to Rock Band, when can we expect it?

Now wait a minute, why doesn’t “Black Magic Woman” have the “Gypsy Queen” outro included? What about other songs with multiple names?

Why, after doing this for a few years, doesn’t Harmonix do a better of job of mixing up songs? You would think that Harmonix knows best, that is being silly. When looking at the leaderboards it is obvious they are choosing the wrong songs to release.

Why doesn’t Harmonix announce releases earlier? Hype would drive interest in future releases, why keep your cards so close to your chest?

Talking about hype, do you think the forums are representative of the RB market?

Why didn't this song get a Pro Guitar upgrade?

You bundle songs and give us a discount, why don't you do the same with Pro Upgrades? I would like to see something like a Nirvana Pro Pack 01 so I can save a little on the 10 upgrades.

Has the amount of songs being released be affected by adding keys/harmonies?

When are the leaked Pearl Jam songs (or any leaked songs) coming to Rock Band?

Where are the rest of the Jimi Hendrix albums? [and rumors in general]

What exactly does, “Not on schedule” mean?

Why are Rock Band DLC songs so expensive?

Legacy DLC Upgrades

HMX, why don’t you like us anymore? You take away our songs and you make us pay for upgraded songs we already own and make us buy pro-guitar/bass separate.

Why can’t we get a discount on “RB3 Versions” of the songs?

Hey, if you can release Pro-Guitar/bass upgrades for legacy (RB, RB2 compatible songs) why can’t you release harmony and even keys upgrades?

Free Songs and Packs

Why didn’t the Wii get the free song(s)

Hardware

Has the Fender Squier been discontinued? Will this affect Pro Guitar?

After how many years, still no wireless microphone with controls?

Export

Question: I can’t get the LEGO export to work, can you help?

Will additional disc exports be supported by Rock Band 3 on the Wii in the future?

Why charge an export fee, is it to gouge us for more money? How about just taking a hit on the bottom line and giving it to us free?

Request a Song

Is there any way to request a band or make it more likely for them to be DLC (getting a lot of support, contacting record company, etc.)?

Is there some magical machine that calculates how many people have voted for what at the office? A room full of digital monkey tallying the numbers from the internet?

How can I request pro upgrades? Will you make a request tool for it like you did for regular songs for us selected players?

Rock Band 1 & 2


I don’t have RB3 yet, does this mean I can’t buy new songs for RB2?

Rock Band 3

Is there a limit on the number of characters that can be created?

Why is the game telling me I need to get a negative score to increase my rank?
Is the Dave Ghrol achievement bugged?

What is taking so darned long in fixing problems with the game and/or web site? We have been waiting forever for a patch

What was the reasoning behind removing both online and local competitive modes from RB3?

Hey! Why can’t I play Pro-Guitar online with people who don’t have Pro Charts? If I am playing Pro Guitar with three others that are playing pro drums and keys, but don’t own the pro-guitar charts, because they don’t need them, why can’t I play with them?

Can’t you fix vocal overdrive deployment better than that?

So, with no RB4 and all of the focus HMX is giving to other HMX titles, has the focus shifted away from Rock Band for good?

Rock Band Network

Do RBN songs have pro-drums like HMX released songs do?

Many legacy RBN songs have incorrect Pro Drums charting, unlike the official DLC. Is there any chance these could be fixed by the author, if they so choose, and re-downloaded?

”RBN”, “RBN”, “RBN” is all I hear about, but I have a Wii, where is my RBN?

Message Boards
Everyone having the same avatar on the message boards is driving me nuts, can HMX do something about it?

How much of a effect DO these boards have on sales?

Ownership

Harmonix is no longer owned by Viacom? What happens to us?

OK, now that some time has passed, is HMX suffering from the Viacom breakup?

Wii Specific

Why doesn't the Wii get updated like the other systems?

[Sayburr]

Saved more index expansion if needed

[Sayburr]

Question: Why don’t you pay attention to me?!

HMXThrasher said [There is a reason] why we ask people to keep things in one thread on a topic. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to repeatedly post into different threads: "thanks for noticing, we're working on it" to have a new thread pop up three minutes later with someone accusing our staff of "ignoring" their issue or posting "Harmonix just ignores us."

We're not ignoring anyone - but there are over 100,000 ACTIVE threads on the forums, which is why posting a new thread for every new complaint/thought/suggestion becomes unwieldy. We regularly send forum links around to the development team so that they can see what you guys, the most avid Rock Band fans, are saying about the game. The most effective way to send your feedback forward is if it's kept in one, cohesive, place and not derailed w/personal attacks, asides, conspiracy theories, and rants.

[Sayburr]

Question: The teiring for songs seemed to be messed up, what’s up with that?

HMXhenry said Tiering is always really tough because it's entirely subjective. What I think it a Tier 5 song on guitar may only be a Tier 3 song for better guitarists. But we do a lot of external playtesting with hardcore and casual RB fans to try to find the happy medium when balancing the game. We work on assigning tiers almost up until the last minute as we make charting changes, add new songs and finalize the order they appear in game.

On disc songs are usually tiered against each other, so a Tier 1 vocals song in RB3 is judged as being much easier than a Tier 5 vocal song in RB3... but not necessarily compared to a Tier 1 vocal song from RB1. So each disc is balanced against itself and DLC is balanced against the average, but there will always be songs that are harder for some people or easier for others.

This feedback definitely helps though, and we pass threads like this along internally so we can see what syncs up with playtest, what songs people are struggling with, which patterns seem more consistent with which tiers, etc.

[Sayburr]

Question: What happened to that something special for those who had all 2,000 songs?

HMXhenry said: So here's a little background on this: as we approached the 2,000 song milestone we thought it would be great to get some feedback from the die hard fans that actually owned all the songs that were available. We reached out to an assortment of Xbox360 and PS3 and Wii owners in this thread to ask them about how they got involved with RB, what motivated them to get every single piece of content, share some stories with us, etc.

We didn't have the bandwidth to reach out to everyone in this thread while moving into the dual launch craziness, but we sent the thread around and highlighted as many quotes as we could from as many people as we could. Sorry if that left some people feeling excluded.

Once we had collected all this info, we sent it around to a number of press outlets that ran stories on our 2,000 song milestone and it also informed the writing of our own press release for this huge DLC landmark. And while we weren't able to facilitate interviews (as we had hoped) for some of the most dedicated RB fans you could possibly find. For what it's worth, your comments and your stories made the rounds with press, and while we would have loved to have gotten some of your names in print (the "something awesome" that we hoped to involve you with) I don't think that the stories about the 2,000 song milestone or the energy on the forums would have been anywhere near as positive without your involvement.

Thanks again to everyone that posted in this thread, passed along contact info for other people to reach out to and a huge amount of gratitude to everyone that buys as many tracks as they can every week simply because they love our games and have fun playing new songs. I'll leave this thread open if people want to continue discussions about keeping up with all the DLC and who knows... maybe we'll reach out again when we hit 3,000 songs.

[Sayburr]

Question: I don’t have RB3 yet, does this mean I can’t buy new songs for RB2?

HMXhenry said: The addition of new instruments, new authoring standards and new lighting / animation cues meant that DLC could not be backwards compatible. It's be like trying to play a CD in your tape deck.

[Sayburr]

Question: Why is there sometimes a delay in getting songs released on different consoles?

Different consoles have different submission time lines and that's almost 100% out of our control. Larger submissions take more time to get approved and pushed live, so with such a large library of content we're already pushing the limits of maximum volume of content submission. All we can do is keep on [them] and update you when they give us updates.

[Sayburr]

Question: Hey, I bought songs as DLC that I can’t play anymore, what is going on?

HMXhenry said: Sorry for the delay in officially responding to this.

We hope you're enjoying playing all the available songs inside of Rock Band 3. With regards to "Rock and Roll Star" and "Hier Kommt Alex" those two tracks were featured on the EU disc of Rock Band 2 before they were offered as standalone DLC tracks in other territories.

Unfortunately, because we were not able to support these songs for RB2 EU disc export at launch, we are not able to allow the transfer of DLC tracks. Those two songs WILL continue to work inside of Rock Band 2. We're sorry for the inconvenience.

[Sayburr]

Question: HMX, why don’t you like us anymore? You take away our songs and you make us pay for upgraded songs we already own and make us buy pro-guitar/bass separate.

HMXhenry said:I think if people take a step back and take a look at how much stuff we ARE supporting it will paint our dedication to our fan base in a very different light.

Out of 2,137 songs in the RB library there are fewer than a dozen songs (not counting the 9 HMX songs from RB2 coming for free later) that aren't playable in RB3. That's roughly half of one percent when other music games struggle to retain 50% of their catalog, and the vast majority of other games don't bother with export at all. We don't support the platform ideal because it's easy, but because it's the thing that most rewarding to the user, to the gamer that wants to have all of their songs in one place.

There are a lot of moving pieces in RB's platform concept, including DLC compatibility, title export, hardware compatibility, consistent weekly DLC releases, a variety of Pro upgrade options for DLC, re releasing back catalog requests, adding new instruments, enabling Pro drums in existing legacy songs for free in RB3, etc.

Does the platform mean that all of your songs would upgrade to Pro automatically? No. Does it mean that there will be Pro options available cheaper for people that already purchased the songs? No. Would that be great? Yes, it certainly would, but for a variety of technical and licensing issues outlined in other posts I've made on the forums today it's just not a possibility right now.

I can certainly understand that some people aren't thrilled with the fact that the entirely optional Pro upgrades aren't free, or cheaper or broken down into even smaller offers, but to cite that as the example that proves that we don't care about the loyal fans or the early adopters summarily ignores all of the things that we've done over the last 3 years to ensure that your past titles, your past DLC and your past hardware work within RB3.

[Sayburr]

Question: Why can’t we get a discount on “RB3 Versions” of the songs?

HMXHenry said While this is a great plan in theory, there are a ton of variables that make this much more difficult than it may initially appear. First of all, we'd have to have 1st party (across the board) agree to making a cheaper alternative possible. We'd also have to have bands sign off when licensing songs to have them agree to the smaller price point. We'd also have to add another unique offer to the submission pipeline which could potentially eat in to how many other songs we're able to release in a given week. Beyond that, a lower price point wouldn't change the amount of work that would go in to authoring keyboards and harmonies for those tracks.

While we obviously want to support the people that were early adopters for DLC, we're already pushing the technical limitations of what's possible with numerous DLC submissions for multiple pieces of content on three different platforms. We've provided as many options as possible to make sure that people have a choice when purchasing and upgrading their DLC. Some people may choose to upgrade everything and some people may choose to upgrade nothing. And that's entirely your choice, just as it is with the regular weekly DLC.

I think it makes the most sense to make decisions on a week to week, song to song basis. No one is asking you to commit to Pro everything, always, forever right now. And for those of you concerned about being "forced" to repurchased 2,000 songs at $2 a piece plus upgrades... it took 3 years for us to get to 2,000 songs, and there's going to be weeks where we might not have pro upgrades for any legacy songs, so I wouldn't worry about getting a shakedown for 2,000 optional back catalog songs any time soon. Find what you like most, and buy those things. You still have the legacy songs and you'll have plenty of new DLC every week, so there's going to be a lot of options.